Visit to Tallinn Healthcare College

Our research group visited Tallinn Healthcare College to study their learning environment and readiness to experiment with telepresence robots in simulated hospital situations. We were admitted by solid team including rector of College Ülle Ernits, head of Chair of Nursing Kristi Puusepp et ali.

The training environment of the College appeared fully friendly for deployment of telepresence robots and we even succeeded to run few ad hoc experimental situations in group training process.

The robot (Double 3) was well accepted by students and teachers in different situations (interaction with student in patient role, interaction with student in nurse role). Of coursee not everything went smoothly because the robot was introduced to situation completely unprepared but communication took place!

Tallinn Healthcare College has many spacious classes to train and simulate various real hospital situations and the usage of telepresence robots there as assistants or mediators is just a matter of imagination. Finally, we studied also simulated ambulance car where transportation of patient to medical facility can be played through. Simulated ambulance car is equipped with actuators to simulate car taking turns. Additional forces, tilting the floor and limited space would be too high challenge for contemporary telepresence robots but it is good to keep this option in mind for studies in a more distant future.

Parties agreed to keep contacting and look forward to define participation in joint Horizon project ASAP.