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Robots to invade Scottish hospital, pose as 'workers'
A new £300 million ($445 million) hospital is set to open up soon in Stirlingshire, Scotland. Why would you care about that? Maybe because laser-guided robots will play a fundamental role in the facility's daily running, including the disposal of waste, delivery of meals, cleaning of operating theaters, and (gulp!) drug dispensation. We're told they'll have their own underground lair corridors and dedicated lifts, with humanoid employees able to call them up via a PDA. It's believed that using robots to perform the dirty work will be more sanitary than current methods, but we have to question the sanity of anyone who believes this isn't the first step toward the robot rebellion. Well, it's been nice knowing you guys.
Share the trauma with Trauma Team's co-op
When you play Trauma Team, you'll have the opportunity to do so as a ... team. A new trailer for the medical adventure game (after the break) demonstrates co-op multiplayer in the Surgery, First Response, Orthopedics, and Endoscopy modes. Most of the multiplayer action involves alternating control of procedures between players, though the Surgery mode makes mention of splitting up surgical tools between players, and First Response's co-op requires players to assign patients from a group to each player. There's a sort of "combo meter" that rewards unbroken chains of successful steps performed by both players. In addition, the inactive player in the Endoscopy mode directs light for the active player. Now you have to determine whether you have any friendships strong enough to stand the test of performing endoscopy together.
iTriage provides mobile health advice with style
As the clock ticks down on World Health Day, there's an app that we should tell you about: the free iTriage 2.0 for iPhone (now also available for Android, and with a version coming soon for iPad). It's a provider locator, a symptom and disease database, and more. The iTriage story is intriguing enough; the app was created by Dr. Peter Hudson and Dr. Wayne Guerra, practicing emergency physicians who realized that patients and healthcare consumers were facing information deficits at the moments when they most needed clear and accurate guidance around symptoms, conditions and available care facilities. Patients might have to make several calls to different providers -- a PCP, a specialist, and an ER or urgent care location -- to identify the best pathway of care. Hudson & Guerra's approach to reducing this inefficiency was to break down the complexity of more traditional health resource tools and give users several pathways into the massive taxonomy of medical information. With iTriage, the app starts from the most urgent possibilities (the "Call 911" button). It then works its way down through finding immediate care (ER, specialists, etc.), locating a physician, looking up symptoms and conditions, and an exhaustive library of procedure information (including medical web searches, images & video, and eventually average cost details). Beyond the informational bounty of the app, there's a separate layer that combines location awareness and a connection to the hospital systems for certain areas (mostly HCA hospitals in Colorado and Florida for now, but Hudson says the coverage areas are expanding). Hospitals that partner with iTriage's parent company can choose to list additional information, like ER waiting times or areas of excellence, within the app.
My ridiculously convenient iPad set-up
What happens when an object in motion meets an immovable object? Let me put that another way. Instead of "object in motion," think: "girl skiing." Instead of "immovable object," think "tree." The outcome? A big old "OUCH!", a number of broken bones, and quite a bit of time to be spent at the hospital. Enter geek mom and an iPad. Speaking from (recent) experience, if you're going to get caught up at a hospital for hours and hours on end, with limited access to your home and office, you're not going to do much better than to bring along a few toys like the ones I have with me today. Let me back up a moment. This morning, my laptop died. I'll get around to fixing it but when you're running to the hospital to make sure that you're there at the time you promised, and you were up until 2 the night before, and the laptop is dead, it's time to consider going commando with an iPad. Sure, you'll feel exposed and helpless. The comfort of a normal desktop unit cannot be matched by an iPad's apparently limited abilities. Yet, I totally lucked out today. Between my iPad, wireless Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and a few other strategic goodies, I am actually able to get a little work done today between medical and Xbox consults. (The hospital has a built in Xbox gaming system. Guess who ends up doing IT support for the daughter and running back and forth to the volunteer library to pick out game titles?)
Trauma Team to be less traumatic on wallets
Atlus announced the price point for Trauma Team today, and we believe it improves the game's retail prognosis: It's $39.99. That's less than the retail price of most Wii games for a game with six different, interesting modes of play. Trauma Team will be out May 18. To mark the announcement, Atlus sent out a dramatic new trailer for the game. It's oddly conflict-oriented, with lots of talk about "final battles" and "wars" and "fights." Such destructive language for a game about helping sick people! That's no kind of bedside manner.
Trauma Team scenario writer on the trauma of writing its scenarios
All the story we need in Trauma Team is "some people get sick, and doctors make them better." But Atlus has generously included a story with the medical action game. In a new featurette on the Atlus site, scenario writer Teppei Kobayashi describes the process of writing for six different medical disciplines, including descriptions of required research, and the fact that the team happened to be working on a medical game when the swine flu epidemic gained notoriety. A couple of videos of story sequences are also included in the featurette. In addition, new screens are available here. %Gallery-86407%
Investigate Trauma Team's forensics missions
A few weeks ago, Atlus demonstrated Trauma Team's forensics segments for us in a webcast. The publisher just released a new trailer focusing on that mode, so you can witness the medical crime-solving gameplay for yourself. It's like Phoenix Wright, but more medical-y, and with more revealing clothes. Of course, it wouldn't be Trauma Center without some odd supernatural elements, and in Trauma Team's forensic missions, space virus monsters give way to phone calls from the dead. If only Dr. Naomi Kimishima had the presence of mind to ask the victims who killed them.
See who made the cut in Trauma Team character contest
This is Charlie Malone, a composer who has worked on Pac-Man World Rally, Pirates of the Burning Sea and more. He won a contest held by Atlus at E3. As a result, he's totally going to die -- unless you can save him. Charlie won Atlus's Trauma Team contest, which awarded him the "prize" of becoming a patient in the upcoming medical game. He submitted pictures to Atlus, and was redrawn to "make the character fit the game while retaining the features from the reference picture," according to art director Masayuki Doi. As a result, it'll seem like you're really patching up this guy's insides. We've also updated our gallery with new images of the game's fictional characters. %Gallery-85055%
Trauma Team delayed; recover from the shock with new trailer
We'll be in the waiting room a bit longer before we're allowed to meet with the Trauma Team. Atlus announced a delay from the game's original April 20 date to May 18. In the meantime, in lieu of an old magazine, why not watch this video about Trauma Team's orthopedics mode? It's all about bones -- setting broken bones, drilling into bones, setting pins, and all manner of extremely methodical work to fix broken Day-Glo bones, all represented in-game as movements within precise guidelines. Even without the Trauma Center time limit or malevolent viruses, it seems stressful.
Summon the endoscopy gods in this Trauma Team video
In real life, an endoscopy is when a doctor needs to check out your gutty-works (you know, your innards) using a medical instrument called an endoscope, a long, tube-like device. In the world of Trauma Team, however, to perform an endoscopy you have to summon the power of the "eight million gods that exist to protect this world." You also have to use a bunch of instruments in what appears to be a somewhat complex orchestra conducted by a series of Wiimote and Nunchuk gestures. If there's one thing to take away from this video, it's that the inside of your body is most likely tumor-ridden with tiny little holes everywhere, and you should probably bug your doctor for a check-up. Of course, you could just ask your friend to take a look -- just make sure you sterilize the Wiimote first.
Examine these new Trauma Team screens
Click image for invasive gallery surgery We hope you've got your stethoscope handy, because we have some new Trauma Screens to look over and nary a Doctor Wife™ in sight. There are some cuts to look at, erratic breathing patterns to resolve and even the case of trembly handitis pictured above that needs a cure. So: grab a pen and a clipboard and head into our gallery below to help nurse these wounded screens back to health. %Gallery-83375%
A slice of Trauma Team gameplay
In previous videos for Atlus's upcoming game Trauma Team, we've seen interviews with the voice actors, and behind-the-scenes footage of the recording process and game development. This latest, however, focuses on something that's only been incidental to other trailers: footage of Trauma Team, the game. In this somewhat infomercial-esque video, Atlus introduces the aspect of the game most like its Trauma Center predecessors: the surgical portion. However, unlike the maddening, arcade-style Trauma Center, many of the surgical challenges come without a time limit. Also seen in this video: pretty good 3D models of bones! We just wanted to point that out.
Meet Trauma Team's voice team
The floodgates for Trauma Team publicity are open, starting with the screenshots and now continuing with promotional videos. Atlus takes us behind the scenes of Trauma Team -- wisely choosing to feature the game's voice recording over, say, the medical research the team did. In the first of two videos (above), Atlus offers a tour of PCB Productions, the company producing the voice work for the multidisciplinary medical adventure. In the second (after the break), we meet a few of the actors portraying the quirky medical team, allowing us to put different faces to the voices behind the cartoon characters. Trauma Team is currently scheduled for an April 20 release date.
Trauma Team screens feature the whole team at work
click to cut open the galleryIn case you've forgotten about Trauma Team (it has been a while), Atlus's expanded Trauma Center sequel stars a group of six medical professionals, each an expert in a different discipline. These new screens feature each of the game's six simulated medical practices in action: surgery, forensics, diagnostics, first response, endoscopy, and orthopedics. They all seem to involve similar activities: jabbing, cutting, and otherwise manipulating human bodies with Wii Remote motions. Still, the variety of methods through which you manipulate said bodies should help keep the Trauma Center formula from going stale, as should the personalities of the six quirky doctors (the "Drama Team," if you will). %Gallery-80773%
Vioguard's self-sanitizing keyboard means maybe we don't all have to die this year
If there's one thing scarier than going to the hospital for some potentially harmful harmfulness, it's getting sicker due to some minor slip-up in the carefully-observed hygiene practices of your own personal Zach Braff M.D. That's where Vioguard's newly shipping UVKB50 self-sanitizing keyboard comes in, with a proximity detector to let a set of freshly sanitized keys slide out for use by a health care professional, which slide back once they're not in use to get re-sterilized with anti-bacterial ultraviolet light. The $899 pricetag isn't too bad given the application, but it probably won't be making our own cubicles safer any time soon. Video of the keyboard in action is after the break.
GE's Wireless Patient Monitoring System beams your vitals at 2360MHz
Patients admitted to hospitals often find themselves with dozens of wires and cables strung from their every extremity -- trying to roll over at night resulting in a very large, expensive cat's cradle with the strings ending at sticky pads affixed to sensitive areas. GE is working on a solution, the Wireless Patient Monitoring System, which would accept signals from dozens of non-tethered sensors, beaming that data straight to the people who need to view it whether they be down the hall at the nurse's station or down the road at the driving range. The company is working with the FCC to develop a vendor-neutral frequency band exclusively for such devices to communicate over, the results of which will surely become the latest impediment for whitespace wireless approval.
Littmann Electronic Stethoscope lets docs record, analyze heart rhythm
We didn't even know there was such a thing as an "auscultation workflow" until we first encountered the FreedomScope, a Bluetooth-packing untethered stethoscope. The 3M Littmann Electronic Stethoscope also relies on Bluetooth for wireless communications, but its purpose is somewhat different. While it looks (and for the most part acts) just like a normal stethoscope, it also has noise canceling / sound augmenting technology alongside the ability to record heart and lung sounds, which may then be analyzed using the bundled Zargis StethAssist software. It's a bit on the pricey side at $379, but should be welcomed with open arms by collaborating diagnosticians and avant-garde concert bootleggers. [Via MSN Money; Thanks, Will]
Atlus opens up old wounds with Trauma Team for Wii
Just days before the real life trauma of E3 takes hold, Atlus announced that it will localize the recently revealed Trauma Center successor, Hospital, as Trauma Team for the Wii in North America. As previously noted, the game will feature gameplay across six different medical fields, as players play as a general surgeon, diagnostician, E.M.T., orthopedic surgeon, endoscope technician, and medical examiner. Atlus hasn't yet sewn up all of the details, However, the game is expected to be among the publisher's titles on display during next week's show and we look forward to finding out more before Trauma Team scrubs in next Spring. %Gallery-64456%
Atlus goes beyond Trauma Center for new Wii game 'Hospital'
In this week's Famitsu, Atlus has revealed a "spiritual successor" to the Trauma Center series that expands the game's scope beyond surgery. Hospital, created by the same development team as the hit surgery games, stars six different medical practitioners, each with a different specialization. Only one of the six is a Trauma Center-style surgeon -- Prisoner CR-SO1, a convict whose sentence was reduced in exchange for his surgical expertise.The rest of the group include a diagnostician, a paramedic, a cosmetic surgeon (who performs non-life-or-death procedures like hip replacements), an endoscopic surgeon, and a forensic examiner. Each character features a different style of play.According to 1up's translation of the article, producer Daisuke Kanada told Famitsu that the game "completes one of the goals for a medical series that we've been striving for before, and it's also a wholly new title, not a sequel to Trauma Center. It's not just a surgery game, but an entire hospital in game form.
Merlin medical implant monitoring system approved for use in Europe
Merlin.net, a medical monitoring system developed by St. Jude's Medical has been approved for use in Europe (after previous approval in the US). The system transmits medical information from an implanted pacemaker or implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), to a Merlin monitoring unit in the patient's home, which then transmits the information to the hospital or caretaker. Transmitting the data can occur at any time, regardless of whether the patient is even awake, and provides constant monitoring of the patient. If the system detects a possible problem or "event," it will alert the doctor by text message, email or fax, making possibly emergency situations more easily treatable. Merlin is expected to be marketed to health care provides starting in the spring -- which is currently happening -- so any day now. [Via Medgadget]
