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The traditional Lassie-era image of the white-cloaked, stethoscope-adorned doctor carrying a black bag into his patient’s bedroom on a house call seems archaic these days.
Now, in this time of constant Internet access, even the more contemporary practice of doctors visiting their patients at their hospital bedsides is rapidly becoming outdated.

It seems that people have traded in the Lassie era for the Jetsons space age as they’ve taken a liking to the new doctors at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Hospital: robot doctors.

Standing at about five feet tall, the gray ET-look-a-like robots, equipped with wheels, a rear license plate and a monitor for a head, zip about from room to room and patient to patient, making assessments and evaluations.

It took about half a decade to produce technology that would allow doctors to sit before their computers anywhere in the world and communicate with patients and other healthcare staff in a moment’s notice. In that time, InTouch Health, the company that manufactured these robots, created machines that give doctors 24-hour access to their patients.

And patients benefit from this, said Surgeon in Chief Thanjavur Ravikumar, because their physicians are aware of their status at all times – which, he quipped, may not always be best for the doctors.

The speedy robot threesome at North Shore-LIJ, a couple of whom are decked out in their physicians’ white coats, one even wearing a tie, spend time in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital where physicians specialize in the care of critically ill patients.

Not only are these doctors interacting with their patients on a medical level during these critical times, they’re lifting their spirits just by being there in spirit themselves.

It would seem odd to have only the image and voice of a doctor conducting an examination, but following a nine-month patient-robot interaction study, Chairman of Urology at North Shore-LIJ Louis Kavoussi discovered that patients prefer their doctors in robot form to a temporary doctor instead.

Another North Shore-LIJ physician, Corrado Marini, said these plastic machines, which each cost about $5,000 per month, are favored by patients and preferred over per diem doctors who are needed because of the shortage of intensivists in the ICU.

Per diem doctors do not know patients’ histories; they have not built a rapport with the patients nor are they familiarized enough to be fully comfortable. The robots remedy the distance between the patients and interim physicians by bringing their primary doctors to their bedsides, adding the benefits of acquaintanceship and situational knowledge, said Marini.

The three physicians agreed that the robots are cost-effective and said they hope that eventually, not only will these robots bring back the age-old house-call concept, but that they’ll even have the ability to perform minor surgery and use more hands-on methods of assessing patients.

But for now, they’ll continue to open up patient access and, as North Shore urologist Lee Richstone said, “brighten” people and bring smiles to their faces.