On a frigid –38 C March day in Saskatchewan’s far north, Daniel Powder wasn’t feeling well. His doctor, one of just two on call for a region of nearly 10,000 people, sent him for an ultrasound, an appointment that normally requires a costly two-hour flight south.
But this time, he walked into the local hospital near Stony Rapids, about 800 kilometres north of Saskatoon, to get looked at by a robot. Through a screen, Powder met a sonographer in Saskatoon who controlled the machine’s probe remotely with a computer.
“Rather than wait weeks for the results, you only wait two, three days,” Powder said. “Technology is going a long way and I figured that was really something.”
