PAM: a robotic solution to patient handling

The handling of bedridden patients and resulting injuries to nurses' backs in modern hospital practice is a problem to which an urgent solution is needed. Manually pumped hydraulic patient hoists have drawbacks that make them widely ignored, and there are numerous medical cases for which existing equipment is unsuitable. A robotic manipulator must meet a demanding requirements specification for the movement of patients, with safety always being considered. A project definition study into PAM - the Patient Assistant for Mobility - was carried out by a collaborative team from industry and universities. It resulted in a concept for a robotic patient handler based on 3 subsystems: a patient surface, an intelligent mobile base, and a system controller-Human/Computer Interface, which together form a sophisticated 8-degrees-of-freedom articulated cart. The PAM project started a demonstrator phase that is grant aided under the UK Department of Trade and Industry's Advanced Robotics Initiative, and it has numerous project collaborators.