Cambridge, MA, Oct. 19, 2004 - There's a robo-doc and a robo-cat who are coming to this college town soon to show how they can assist in the treatment of patients. Also headed this way is a highly regarded fellow who believes a celestial hospital at the end of a space elevator is not far away, so to speak.

Those machines of the near future will be shown off this month at the ninth annual Future of Health Technology Summit at the MIT Faculty Club, an annual event that brings together the world's leading health technology experts to share leading-edge medical technologies.

The robo-doc, formally known as the Remote Presence Robot, RP-6, manufactured by InTouch Health of Santa Barbara, Calif., allows doctors from a remote location to personally visit on patients. Doctors can guide the robot to the patient's bedside, take pictures of charts, and speak to the patient through the robot.

In addition to improving care, the robo-doc allows more patient comfort, as studies have shown that patients prefer having the same doctor visit them, even if sometimes through robotic contact, rather than having several different physicians checking on them.

"The robot also allows those physicians to make more visits, which improves physician efficiency and quality of care," said Yulun Wang, founder of InTouch Health.

The robo-cat is not a toy either. It is being developed by Drs. Elena and Alexander Libin, affiliate faculty of Georgetown University and founders of Cyber-Anthology Research, to bring the therapeutic effects of pet ownership to special needs patients without the feeding and care demands of a more traditional pet.

"The robotic cat, with artificial intelligence and sensory feedback that allows it to respond to human voice and touch, helps patients, especially reluctant children and the elderly, to open their emotions. It serves as a non-pharmacological intervention aimed at negative emotional states," said Dr. Alexander Libin.

The conference, organized by the Future of Health Technology Institute in Hopkinton, also includes discussions of the space elevator by Bradley Edwards, the chief scientist of the Space Elevator Project.

Edwards, internationally known for his work, will discuss the prospects for what would basically be a cable car ride of tens of thousands of miles into space. He has said that the rapid increase in the production of carbon nanotubes - the new material needed to develop the cable - could make the space elevator a reality within a decade. The elevator might one day go to a zero gravity space hospital, which could facilitate faster recovery through a dramatic change of perspective as well as in general rehabilitation with the lessening of pressure on the heart and bones.

"Developments like robo-docs and space elevators are not just exotic; they are a reaffirmation that with creative thinking we can go a long way to the discoveries that will allow us to fix our healthcare system and set it on a high road for the future," said Renata Bushko, director of the Future of Health Technology Institute."

In addition to presentations on other aspects of future technology and health, the conference will include an interactive session with staff from Design Continuum on delivering intelligent medical devices in a way that consumers understand.

Registration for the Oct. 25 summit at MIT's Faculty Club is available online at www.fhti.org or by calling 508-497-2577.

About The Future of Health Technology Institute
The Future of Health Technology Institute in Hopkinton, Mass., is the health technology think tank dedicated to defining the health technology agenda for the 21st century. The institute was established to identify the most promising technologies to improve the quality of health care and to define promising health technology research areas needed to meet future health challenges. Renata Bushko (Bushko@fhti.org) has chaired annual Future of Health Technology summits since founding the institute in 1996. These summits engage creative minds from the technology and healthcare fields in envisioning the future of technology for global healthcare. For further information, visit the Web site at www.fhti.org.