As the health system begins to bend and buckle under the strain of rising costs, staff shortages and ever increasing demand for services, a robot being developed in Santa Barbara could ease the pressure.

Billed by its developers, InTouch Health, as the "world's first mobile remote presence robot for healthcare," the Companion is designed to enable health care assessment, consultation and treatment from a distance.

The idea is that a doctor or other healthcare professional, sitting at a high-tech console in, for example, Santa Barbara, can remotely control the robot and "virtually" treat patients in a distant rural community.

The fully mobile Companion can roll around the floor of a medical center, hospital or other health facility. Its mounted camera films the patient while the caregiver's face appears on the robot's television screen-like head.

Some sophisticated software and a broadband wireless Internet connection link the remote healthcare professional, the patient and usually another cargiver with the patient, enabling all three to see and talk with each other.

The bottom line is a more efficient, effective and extended health service which saves time and money while making optimum use of limited medical staffing and resources. InTouch Health, founded just a year ago and now with 10 staff, has enjoyed good local financial support right from the start when the company gained private investor seed funding via the Santa Barbara Technology Group.

More recently, InTouch Health secured $1.5 million in a round of investment led by former UCSB physics professor Virgil Elings. Mr. Elings, founder, past president and former chairman of one-time Goleta company Digital Instruments, and his son Jeff contributed about $1 million.

The driving force behind this marvel of electro-mechanical engineering is Yulun Wang, InTouch Health's chairman and CEO and a man regarded as a world authority on robotics and telemedicine.

His first foray into the world of medical robotics came 14 years ago when he founded Goleta-based Computer Motion, now a public company specializing in the miniature instruments and technology associated with endoscopic surgery.

That technology led to a landmark long-distance operation in 2001, when the robotic surgical system was used by doctors in New York to operate on a patient in France. Theoretically, the Companion too could one day straddle California, the United States or even the world, linking any number of health care institutions and potentially many different caregivers and patients.

"It's all about extending the reach of caregivers, leveraging scarce resources, lowering costs, and improving the quality of care," said Mr. Wang.
Because it is considered a communications tool, the robot, currently being put through its paces in the Rehabilitation Institute at Santa Barbara, does not require Food and Drug Adminstration approval.

During a recent demonstration, it was remotely "driven" from across town by physical therapist Amy Dillon, who monitored the progress of a "recovering stroke victim" portrayed by colleague Amanda Nicolato.

The Companion was able to track up and down alongside the faltering steps of the patient, its camera zooming in and out, while Ms. Dillon offered encouragement, instruction and praise in equal measure.

Though the Companion works well among rehab patients struggling to recover from strokes or brain or spinal injuries, InTouch Health has just started a field trial at a senior living facility in Calabasas.

Initially, InTouch Health plans to lease Companion robots to institutions caring for the elderly, probably at around $2,500 to $3,000 per month. In time, said Mr. Wang, they could start turning up in private homes, likely with a number of other personal assistance functions grafted on.

"The focus is principally on helping to take care of seniors," said Mr. Wang, who quotes statistics to show that today's health care challenges, exacerbated by a chronic shortage of nurses, will surely grow much more acute as the elderly population explodes.

"There is a demographic crisis in health care," he said. "Over the next 20 years there will be massive growth in our senior population. People are living longer. In the last 60 years, life expectancy has gone up 15 years."

The AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) paints an equally vivid picture. As baby boomers move through retirement, the number of senior citizens will rocket from about 40 million in 2010 to around 70 million by 2030.