PFI-TT: Care Delivery Telehealth Drone

创新伙伴关系-技术转化（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将通过开发一种基于无人机的医疗保健交付设备来实现，该设备将有助于保持患有慢性疾病的老年人的生活质量，并使他们能够在家中生活，同时获得高质量的医疗保健。如果成功，预计远程医疗无人机将：i)能够快速响应需要立即关注的医疗保健需求；Ii)能够在家中提供改进的、具有成本效益的高质量服务，以及iii)通过减少缺席和取消医疗预约，减少医疗保健组织的收入损失。拟议的产品旨在解决诸如缺乏优质医疗保健提供者、获得医疗保健以及老年人制度化护理的财务影响等社会挑战。拟议的创新有望帮助缓解社会经济差距，并为居住在农村、城市和郊区的患者提供全科医生和专家服务，而不考虑住宅类型。拟议的项目旨在开发、测试和展示一种可行的无人机原型，该原型可以在人们居住的地方安全地提供医疗保健，并在室外和室内环境中可靠地运行。本研究的目标是：i)开发具有所需软件和硬件功能的护理交付无人机原型；Ii)为护理交付无人机的用户开发接口；iii)测试和验证护理交付无人机的原型。提出的工作旨在解决与无人机室内导航、人机交互和远程医疗系统相关的几个技术障碍。开发无人机远程操作、室内定位、避障和监控智能控制的软件能力，以增强对时间延迟和丢失链接的鲁棒性，是本项目的一些研究目标。此外，本研究将解决人机/人机远程医疗系统交互的界面问题，以提高系统效率。结果将有助于揭示为远程医疗和其他民用应用设计远程操作和用户无人机交互界面的基本原则。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project will be achieved by developing a drone-based healthcare delivery device that would help preserve the quality of life of older adults with chronic medical conditions and allow them to live in their homes while obtaining high quality healthcare. If successful, the care delivery telehealth drone is expected to: i) enable quick response to healthcare needs that need immediate attention; ii) enable delivery of improved and cost-effective quality at home, and iii) reduce loss of revenue by healthcare organizations by diminishing no-shows and cancellations of medical appointments. The proposed product is designed to address societal challenges such as shortage of quality healthcare providers, access to healthcare, and financial impact of institutionalized care of older adults. The proposed innovation is expected to help alleviate the socioeconomic disparities and provide general practitioners and specialists access to patients residing in rural, urban, and suburban areas irrespective of type of dwelling. The proposed project aims to develop, test, and demonstrate a viable drone prototype that can safely deliver healthcare to people at their place of residence and operate both in outdoor and indoor environment reliably. The goals of this proposed study are: i) developing the care delivery drone prototype with required software and hardware capabilities; ii) developing interfaces for users of the care delivery drone; and iii) testing and validating the prototype of the care delivery drone. The proposed work is intended to solve several technological barriers related to indoor navigation of drones, human-robot interaction, and telehealth systems. Developing software capabilities for teleoperation of drones, indoor localization, obstacle avoidance, and supervisory intelligent control for robustness against time delays and lost link are some of the research objectives of this project. Furthermore, the study will address issues at the interface of human-drone/human-telehealth system interaction to increase system efficiency. The results will help uncover the underlying principles of designing interfaces for teleoperation and user-drone interaction for telehealth and other civilian applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.