A clinic in Singapore is trialling Emma, a robot masseuse that helps relieve patients’ strains and physical injuries.
Emma is made of a robotic arm, with a 3D-printed massage tip. The idea behind the robot is to “improve productivity”, allowing “one therapist to treat multiple patients”, said Albert Zhang, founder of AiTreat, the startup in charge.
So far, Kin Teck Tong clinic has trialled it on 50 patients with stiff muscles, lower back pain and muscle strains. Emma is also equipped with pressure sensors that can measure how stiff a muscle or tendon is.
Detailed diagnostics can be uploaded to the cloud so patients can measure their progress with precise data - a new approach in traditional chinese medicine.
The tech holds promise to solve a manpower shortage and treat a rising number of ageing patients. “Over the next decade, more people are going to suffer from physical ailments such as arthritis and will be seeking treatment”, said Coco Zhang, Executive Director of Kin Teck Tong, a chain of clinics specialising in injury rehabilitation.
“As the younger generation prefer knowledge-based jobs rather than physically intensive jobs such as massage therapists, there will likely be a shortage of trained therapists in future”, she added.
However, the clinic plans to open the service only after a more mature prototype has been developed.
It is still in its first phase, and can only perform simple massages on a same spot, Elaine Ren, marketing manager for the clinic told GovInsider. At the moment, therapists can still perform more than what the robot is capable of, she said.
To improve Emma’s service delivery, the clinic chain is working closely with AiTreat - incubated by the Nanyang Technological University - to test and gather feedback to develop and improve the model, she added.
Berlangganan Bulletin GovInsider: Pembaruan terkini tentang inovasi sektor publik
*Jika saya telah memberikan alamat email domain non-bisnis (seperti, namun tidak terbatas pada, gmail, hotmail, dll) saya melakukannya dalam konteks yang digunakan untuk bisnis saya dan bukan interaksi pribadi dengan GovInsider.
GovInsider adalah bagian dari Clarion Events Pte Ltd yang merupakan bagian dari Grup perusahaan Clarion Events (Clarion).
Kami menjaga privasi Anda dengan serius. Kami ingin menggunakan informasi Anda berdasarkan kepentingan sah kami untuk tetap berhubungan dengan Anda tentang acara, produk, dan layanan relevan yang mungkin menarik bagi Anda. Kami hanya akan menggunakan informasi yang kami kumpulkan atau terima tentang Anda sesuai dengan Kebijakan Privasi kami. Jika Anda memilih kami untuk tidak menghubungi Anda tentang acara, produk, dan layanan relevan yang kami yakin akan Anda minati, Anda dapat mengelola preferensi Anda melalui link yang akan kami kirimkan kepada Anda, berhenti berlangganan menggunakan link di email kami atau dengan mengirim email ke [email protected].
