Page 57 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

36 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

assistance to thousands of deployed personnel. Another example—a
complete robotic combat casualty extraction and evacuation system—
has been developed to reduce the risk of injury for combat medics and
other rescue personnel. Still another example is a smart device be-
ing developed for telesurgery and telerobotics. It will be able to adapt
quickly to abrupt changes (e.g., available network bandwidth). This
will make surgery for wounded soldiers more effective, allowing ex-
perts to assist or perform surgery at a distance.
Your ability to be in one place and to have the fruit of your work si-
multaneously occur in another will burgeon as these kinds of products
come of age. One of TATRC’s portfolios is health information tech-
nologies, and one project it is overseeing is being led by Healthwise,
Inc. Dave Foster, the director of product management at Healthwise,
told us, “The same technology that is allowing a radiologist to see
information about a patient hundreds of miles away is also going to
allow a doctor to see information about a patient and provide a virtual
information prescription to them.”
10
Brian Dolan is the cofounder and editor of MobiHealthNews, an
online daily trade journal covering the emerging wireless health space.
Part of his job is to think about the future of health care. He goes even
further than Dave. Among his predictions is that in just a few years
wireless health sensors will be prescribed by physicians to assess heart
conditions, which “will allow physicians to remotely monitor patients
and get new, more comprehensive information unlike any information
they’ve had before.” 11
Don’t you think that, if doctors can conduct surgery half a world
away, your workers might, someday, be able to do their work at a dis-
tance too, and not simply by communicating with members of your
team or clients? Can you picture the truck driver who operates his
truck in Cincinnati while he’s sitting in his living room? Or the me-
chanic who fixes specialty cars two states away? Or the professor who
teaches students all over the world? (Wait—that’s already happen-
ing!) How about having virtual police officers? Can you visualize ho-
lograms that give out virtual tickets or stop cars while the officer sits
safely in her car or back at the department several miles away?