Typically, I am tasked with writing a blog connecting telehealth with education. This is an ideal situation considering my experience as a school teacher and my current role as the instructional designer for the South Central Telehealth Resource Center. However, this past weekend has drawn me to take a different approach for this post.
I am a father of two young children – ages 4 and 7. This weekend, we decided to take them to see the movie, Big Hero 6. This was a movie that my son just had to see as he is obsessed with all things superhero. I am not going to pin it all on him. I kind of wanted to see it too. I will do my best to not make this into a movie review even though it was a fun movie. Instead, I want to bring it back to the topic at hand – telehealth. That’s right, Baymax, the inflatable star of the film, was created to serve as a “personal healthcare companion” and not the armored crime-fighting force that is depicted in the trailers. Baymax embodies telehealth through the field of robotics.
Baymax is activated when he witnesses someone say “Ow!” or expresses some other form of personal distress. Once Baymax is active, he assesses the patient by scanning them. He searches for the sources of pain and even goes as far as evaluating neurotransmitters to determine mood. Throughout the film, interspersed with the aforementioned crime fighting, Baymax shows us the different healthcare applications he possesses. After scanning the character Hiro, Baymax sees that he is in a saddened state. Baymax understands the different treatments for this and immediately contacts Hiro’s circle of friends so they can provide support. At one point, Baymax startles Hiro to the point that the boy says that “he almost had a heart attack” so Baymax activates the defibrillators in his hands to help. Another example is when the group of friends falls into a river; Baymax scans and discovers that their body temperatures are low and he emits a warming glow to regulate them. While these seem like concepts that can only exist in an animated film, they are not too far from technologies that are being developed today.
I understand that my job is to connect education with telehealth, and this association that I have illustrated may seem like a stretch; I can assure you it is not. When we left the theater, I started to tell my kids about the possibilities of telehealth and how using concepts such as Baymax will lead to improved healthcare for the general population…in a manner of speaking. The crazy thing is, at 4 and 7, they understood what I was talking about – they were educated.
The best part is that our hero cannot be deactivated until the patient states: “I am satisfied with the care I have received.” Really, isn’t that what we should be looking for when it comes to healthcare?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEeBXUUOBiI
