Robotic design for hospital use

Today is a proposal for any member of our forum.
I'm running an academic programme were I built a patient temperature logging and monitoring system, with a drug time reminder.

The device has the ability of storing the patients data like, name, sex, age, bed number through a ps/2 keyboard interface with the system.
It has the ability of sending an SMS to a Dr.s' phone when the temperature of the patients exceeds the logged temperature. It can as well alert the patient drug time.

On a change of supervisor, the work was rendered effortless due to some changes that the new supervisor wants on the work. Below are the changes.

1. The Tittle of the design was change to as robotic design which was not my initial design hence movement should be involve to qualify the name ROBOT.
2. The design should be with the Nurse at the entrance of the patients ward, so that when a visitor enter the ward he/she should enter the patients name on the interfaced keyboard to the robot and the robot should lead the visitors to the patient bed and return back to the entrance to wait for the next visitor.
3. the robot should text the Dr.s' phone when ever the temperature of any patient in the ward( e.g. A ward of four patients ) exceeded the log temperature.
3. The robot should be able to txt the Nurse phone on any patients drug time. The txt will include the patient data, name of drug to take, dosage and time. Then the robot should as well move to the patients bed and make an alarm and returns back to it's initial position.

This is the challenge at hand.
I need any person with a robotic idea to crack this shell of problem to me, or to take the design as a whole and discuss the financial implication to me.

And if any has an idea on a robotic design to adopt then I will really appreciate it bcos the supervisor needs a ROBOT with high important functions.

I will be expecting to hear from the able talented members of our great forum.

I'm always available for more explanation.

Engr. Muazu

Now that’s what I call a project That sounds interesting

1st Question
What system would you use to get the robot to the door and to the patients bed
Would this be white line follower In other words would you be able to paint a white line on the hospital floor that would be byt far the beste and easiest solution not forgetting saftey detection moving objects in the path Not difficult to put into place but would need vigorous testing Safety reasons

2nd question
Entering the data into the keypad would mean a look up database of some description
this is going to be done on a the robot which means the robot must have some type of wifi connection to the mainframe of the hospital which means sql , not difficult

Suggestion raspberry pi all built in plus instant wireless keyboard plus hdmi out for screen on robot plus serial comm’s connection for gsm modem, or you could add aditional pic micro processor to this as well as a peripheral , linux ready , and if you want, you can run java

Nice and easy to work with Port ready , Theres a GPIO port available for motor control circuitry plus has hardwire network connection as well

Software upgrades etc so very easy to implement and would tie in very nicely to all aspects of the Robot

Plus if you wanted too you could create a nice GUI using Qt based framework or java for your TFT to which you could then add touch screen for full interaction btw doctor, patient and nurses

Lovley idea ,

I bought one the other day to learn with now that ive played with pic and atmel , networking and other langauges inclding c , java , ansi c , linux and hardware with motor and relay control plus dot net Although ive got fair amount to cover yet No great rush is there You can also program in Android on this as well

Ought to be quite handy

Out of interest you can also stream live video and sound contenet from this as well , means webcam attachments can be done too making this very interesting



3rd Question
How could you build in a system so that both the robot and the visitor would know about the existence of the patient at his / her bedside?

4th part

The text message can be handled one of two ways either by gsm modem straight to the doctors phone or by the mainframe via wifi connection from the robot then via gsm modem in the background one each ward or as a dedicated server

Suggestion raspberry pi

5th part
Patients temperature readings etc again this is purely gsm could be wifi but would be better gsm from the point of if the patient steps out of bed temperature control interfaced to gsm module mentioned in point 4

6th part

Medicine notification
Texting the nurse can be a database function as part of the mainframe via database suggest this is mainframe and forms part of the network database for patients on the ward

Just easier to implement Strictly would limit this to mainframe Up to the doctor to transfere that information back to the mainFrrame then calling a duty roster with nurses pager or mobile phones possibility bluetooth

Finally This is a group project You want to attack this from a group point of view not just one person a team of people but I’m interested!!

Have read up on this

http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

Really interesting All down to knowledge this is and a bit of hard work

Hows does that sound ? Sounds good to me

You not going to have R2D2 walking up and down the wards are you , that should make life more interesting at the hospitals

Blimey you could even do away with the hospital managers and the staff and reception eventually fancy that David cameron more bonuses get the old robot to kick them out of the hospital

Joking ok, blimey !!

it seems that any design that i propose for use by any nursing staff is not simple enough for that staff to use. all the design is simple EXCEPT escort guest to rooms.. that in itself is simple but needs to be a standalone system.. any rc toy, a couple of servo's and an on board raspberry or two,, patient care needs to be stand alone, dual wireless network cards to a server.. i would use voip for the notification side and wireless sensors for each bed