SAN ANTONIO — Staff Sgt. Juan Amaris lay in intensive care recovering from life-threatening burns when he got a peculiar visit from his doctor. Dr. Kevin Chung — rather, a 5-foot-tall camouflage-clad robot with Chung’s face on a monitor — rolled in to check on him.
With his proxy’s cameras zooming and wireless antennas beaming, Chung stood in a kitchen in Virginia and examined Amaris from 1,500 miles away, providing a connection between doctor and patient even as Chung was on vacation.
Use of the robot began as an Army telemedicine pilot project several years ago. But its success in allowing Chung to check on patients while deployed and in training nurses far away means the Chungbot — its nickname at Brooke Army Medical Center — is here to stay.
“It became so clinically useful, it was no longer a research tool,” said Chung, who oversees the Army’s only burn intensive-care unit.
