Telehealth Frontiers: Social Telerobots in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics
ABSTRACT
Background:
COVID-19 has severely impacted health in vulnerable demographics. As communities transition back to in-person work, learning, and social activities, pediatric patients who are restricted to their homes due to medical conditions face unprecedented isolation. Pre-pandemic, it was estimated that each year, over 2.5 million US children remain at home due to medical conditions. Throughout and after COVID-19, it is expected that this number will be much higher.
Objective:
Confronting gaps in health and technical resources is central to addressing the challenges faced by children who remain at home. Having children use mobile telemedicine units (telerobots) to interact with their outside environment (e.g., school, play, etc.) is increasingly recognized for the potential to support children’s learning. Additionally, social telerobots are emerging as a novel form of telehealth. A social telerobot is a tele-operated unit with a mobile base, two-way audio/video capabilities, and some semi-autonomous features. The telerobots are placed in organic physical spaces (i.e., local environments) and children login (i.e., embody) the telerobot to control the telerobot’s movements and interactions from their homes (i.e., remote environment).
Methods:
In addition to existing telerobot advantages, we present three promising robot-mediated supports that contribute to optimal child development--belonging, competence, and autonomy. These robot-mediated supports may be leveraged for improved pediatric patient socio-emotional development, well-being, and quality of life activities that transfer traditional developmental and behavioral experiences from organic local environments to the remote child.
Results:
In this paper, we provide a critical review of studies focused on the use of social telerobots for pediatric populations.
Conclusions:
This review contributes to creation of the first pediatric telehealth taxonomy of care that includes personal use of telehealth technologies as a compelling form of telehealth care.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.