As part of a partnership between the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Center for Telehealth and the Dartmouth Department of Athletics, a robot will be roaming the sidelines for all five of Big Green's football games this fall.
The robot is part of a remote concussion assessment pilot program that began on Saturday that aims to provide "real time, emergency clinical support via virtual technologies to a variety of Dartmouth sports" according to the official release from the university.
The robot, along with some tablet and smartphone integrations, will allow doctors and neurosurgeon's not at the game to remotely provide their expert assessments of Dartmouth players with suspected concussions.
“Our goal at Dartmouth is to give our student-athletes the best medical care possible,” noted Drew Galbraith, the senior associate AD for Peak Performance. “By partnering with the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Center for Telehealth we can tap into the latest technology and provide additional medical coverage by having a neurosurgeon on call should a player suffer a significant head injury or need a concussion screening.”
The sidelines will be just one of the launching points of the new technology, with the aim to bring it to other areas of need in the near future.
“Telemedicine technology will help us have greater coverage for our teams. For example, when they’re training far from campus, such as Nordic skiing, or holding a practice out of season, especially sports where there’s a risk for head injuries. Having the ability to connect to a doctor immediately presents some real opportunities for us to provide better care for our athletes in the moment.”