When a young IAS officer, Aditya Ranjan, posted as district deputy development commissioner in Jharkhand's Chaibasa town, heard about how a patient who tested positive for COVID-19 unknowingly went about interacting with more than 100 people in a general hospital in Bokaro on April 4, he couldn't sit still. Ranjan's brother is a doctor whose batchmates are posted in Bihar's Bhagalpur where six health workers contracted COVID-19.
A computer science engineer by training, with an interest in Robotics, Ranjan decided to put his college training to good use in this hour of crisis. He scanned videos from China where hospitals had used advanced technology bots to tend to patients without human intervention—merely feeding the patient's room number into the bot was enough for it to function. From his garage, Ranjan used old vehicle spare parts, changed the radio frequency from kHz to mHz, made water-proof steel chambers, did some welding and spray painting, apart from drilling holes for light, camera and speakers. Soon Rajan's own version of a medical bot was ready. This remote-controlled 'Co-bot' now delivers food and medicine to patients suspected of COVID-19 infection, without roping in doctors or nursing staff in the 50-bed South Eastern Railway Hospital in Chaibasa.
Ranjan remembers the Wi-Fi cameras installed in strongrooms in the state during the Lok Sabha elections last year. These cameras—used for webcasting from strongrooms which stored EVM machines—could rotate 360 degrees and also had a speaker embedded within. Although there was no use of the speaker then, Ranjan has now re-purposed that speaker to work as a two-way communication system in his DIY "collaborative robot".
"It became a two-way speaker system. It is working like tele-medicine inside the ward but the doctor sits outside," says Ranjan who can see the bot operating in the hospital from his house.
Though Chaibasa has not recorded any positive cases of COVID-19 infection, some 35-40 suspected patients are being serviced by the 'Co-bot' every day. "Patients seem very excited about this new technology. The funny thing is that when the bot tells them to pick up their pack of water and breakfast, often the patients end up taking more than their share," laughs Ranjan, who has also created an isolation bed (i- bed) which is covered with a plastic veil to prevent a patient from sneezing on to the bot. The 'Co-bot', armed with a sanitiser, typically delivers food and medicine to five patients at a time before coming back to be completely disinfected again."The bot asks the patients to put their hands outside the plastic sheet, use the santiser and collect their packets of essentials," says Ranjan about his indigenous robot's typical interaction with a patient.
Before creating the 'Co-bot', Ranjan had devised phone booth sample collection technology and shielding masks to protect frontline healthcare workers at a stage of interaction with unknown people when wearing of PPE is not allowed.
The 32-year-old IAS officer has received accolades in the past for his education and healthcare initiatives, including building of 750 model anganwadi centres and 60 plus L1 health centres, in Jharkhand's Singhum district. Ranjan believes that if social distancing and lockdown rules are strictly followed, India can have the pandemic under control by the end of May. "The best thing Indian can do right now is to increase testing," says Ranjan who is in the process of making 'Co-bots' available to other hospitals in the district.
