Say hello to
sara
Stroke Assessment Robotic Assistant connects
emergency room staff to team of Baylor neurologists
by scott nishimura
- [email protected]
B
aylor All Saints Medical
Center has added an
important piece of new
machinery – a 7-foottall robot dubbed SARA by the
staff.
SARA, which stands for
Stroke Assessment Robotic Assistant, connects the Fort Worth
hospital’s emergency room staff
to a team of Baylor system
neurologists around the clock,
when a patient comes in showing
symptoms of a stroke.
“They can come in within
literally seconds in a condition
where seconds matter,” Dr.
David Klein, Baylor All Saints’ president
said.
Baylor brought the $60,000 SARA into
the hospital in early 2014 and the ER has
used it in as many as a dozen cases, Klein
said during a recent demonstration in the
All Saints emergency room.
Last year, Baylor brought a similar
robot into its Irving hospital for use in
stroke situations. It also has another one
at its Waxahachie hospital, and plans to
put another in one more Baylor hospital
this year, said Dr. Dion Graybeal, one
of the six Baylor system neurologists on
the team that responds to ER calls using
Wi-Fi-enabled links, desktops, laptops
and iPad Minis.
The technology also could be put into
play in smaller hospitals as the Baylor and
Scott & White systems move through
their merger, Klein and Graybeal said.
In the past, if an ER receives a patient
ABOVE: Using an iPad Mini, Dr. Dion Graybeal zoomed
SARA’s camera in and out of his patient’s face, and panned
around the room, as if he were studying the monitors or speaking to the ER staff during a recent demonstration.
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