In less than one year, work­ers at hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres will get much-need­ed as­sis­tance in the bat­tle against COVID-19, in the hope that this, in turn, will make health­care more ac­ces­si­ble to vul­ner­a­ble pa­tients.

The help, how­ev­er, isn’t com­ing from ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er but from ro­bot­ics and telemed­i­cine sys­tems.

The ini­tia­tive will be made pos­si­ble through the In­dia-UN De­vel­op­ment Part­ner­ship Fund that al­lowed a US $1 mil­lion grant from the gov­ern­ment of In­dia to be used in the in­tro­duc­tion of these tech­nolo­gies, it was re­vealed at a launch yes­ter­day.

The project is al­so be­ing done in con­junc­tion with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“As we move to­ward learn­ing to live with the pres­ence of the virus, we need to en­sure that the gains made ear­ly are not lost,” Dr Er­i­ca Wheel­er, PA­HO/WHO Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Trinidad and To­ba­go, said dur­ing the event.

The project, ac­cord­ing to Dr Wheel­er, is set to as­sist the more vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety and has three main out­comes.

These in­clude:

(1) Greater ac­cess to health­care through tech­nol­o­gy, which will fo­cus on the use of telemed­i­cine.

(2) Re­duce trans­mis­sion rates risk in pub­lic places.

(3) Greater ac­cess to psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port.

Now, Telemed­i­cine is the re­mote de­liv­ery of health­care ser­vices, in­clud­ing ex­ams and con­sul­ta­tions, us­ing the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture.

Dr Wheel­er said this will pro­tect health pro­fes­sion­als and pa­tients, as well as pre­serve med­ical re­sources for the need­i­est cas­es.

“The use of telemed­i­cine presents the op­por­tu­ni­ty to treat with a num­ber of clients at the same time, while lim­it­ing the need for phys­i­cal in­ter­ac­tion,” Wheel­er said.

The PA­HO/WHO rep­re­sen­ta­tive said the use of ro­bots in the health ser­vice is not a new con­cept and has been used in oth­er coun­tries.

“In terms of the pan­dem­ic, the ro­bots can be placed in health­care lo­ca­tions where the high­est num­bers of cas­es are be­ing record­ed to cap­ture pa­tient in­for­ma­tion and oth­er ser­vices,” she ex­plained.

The project, which start­ed last month, will re­ceive ad­vi­so­ry and tech­ni­cal sup­port from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dr Wheel­er said the bud­get will cov­er the in­tro­duc­tion of eight ro­bots, some of which will be im­port­ed. Dis­cus­sions will take place to de­cide whether UTT can de­sign and build some of the eight ro­bots.

UTT Pres­i­dent, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, said they will as­sem­ble a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary team to pro­vide the re­quired sup­port and en­sure the project is suc­cess­ful.

“A lot of these projects are in sport­ing and en­ter­tain­ment, though we did do some work in as­sis­tive tech­nolo­gies for med­ical pur­pos­es,” he said.

But he not­ed that one of the ma­jor chal­lenges they will face when they put med­ical ro­bots in health fa­cil­i­ties is the re­luc­tance to ac­cept new tech­nol­o­gy, some­thing they an­tic­i­pat­ed and trained for.

“We will see that peo­ple have a re­luc­tance for vac­ci­na­tion, they have a big­ger re­luc­tance for tech­nol­o­gy eh,” the pro­fes­sor said.

UN Res­i­dent Co­or­di­na­tor to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ma­ri­na Wal­ter, said In­dia’s con­tri­bu­tion to this coun­try was par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­er­ous con­sid­er­ing how bad­ly the pan­dem­ic af­fects their own pop­u­la­tion.

“It em­bod­ies what you say the spir­it that we see in the UN that we are all in this to­geth­er,” she said.

Al­so speak­ing, In­dia’s High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Arun Ku­ma Sahu, said, “Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, In­dia has stepped up its hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance …I hope that our en­gage­ment in var­i­ous projects in Trinidad and To­ba­go will on­ly ex­pand.”