Hospitals

Three cool robot toys that children’s hospitals should know about

Only at CES do runway shows feature robots #CES2014 #dhces pic.twitter.com/iZcV39coER — Halle Tecco (@halletecco) […]

 

Jill Gilbert, the organizer of the Digital Health Summit, pulled off a very brave and very creative show last night at the International CES. In the pool at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, she organized a robot fashion show. The event had a lot of cool factor but all the risk of technology failing at a conference.

The Wi-Fi was a little flaky and some of the machines did not behave. But several devices impressed everyone, including the mini drone and the sphere robot that looked like something from a Pixar movie. The DJ was even health-centric with Eric Sharp of BioBeats starting the evening with a 15-minute music set based completely around the audience’s heartbeat.

Three of the runway stars made me think of kids in the hospital. Two are even designed to teach kids to code. What better activity than learning a new skill from your hospital bed and then being able to show off your cool tricks to other kids and visitors.

Sphero – This ball can be programmed to zoom around the room and even jump. There are several games for the little device already and kids can program it to do other things as well. It’s waterproof and shockproof. It can turn different colors and it works on Apple and Android platforms.

Linkbots – These robot toys can bring algebra into the hospital and make it a visual learning experience. An algebraic equation can be programmed into the robot and it will draw out the calculations on a big graph. Parent company Barobo, Inc. was founded in 2010 as a commercial spin-off of technology developed in the Integration Engineering Laboratory at the University of California Davis. The goal is to make robotics more affordable, adaptable, reconfigurable and reprogrammable for education, research and industrial applications. The company’s Mobot is a modular robot designed for K-12 STEM education. You can see the Linkbot in action here.

Remebio – Look in the lower left corner of the picture at the top of this post. That is a blue fuzzy robot designed to help kids with autism. It can talk to kids as well as record videos of the conversations. It is meant to help kids with social skills as well as helping doctors make a diagnosis.

The sumo jumping drone was cool too, but it’s hard to imagine that toy working safely in a hospital.

Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

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