Preliminary examination of the potential of robot-assisted sonography: An ergonomic tool for obstetric sonographers

The aim of this study was to explore the ergonomic challenges, the needs and reservations related to robotassisted ultrasound for obstetric sonographers and thereby to provide information for the design of robotic solutions.
A mixed-method design was used, where data from the obstetric sonographers and their immediate managers from 18 out of a Danish total of 20 obstetric departments was collected. The data was collected through a survey and interviews. 98.1% of the obstetric sonographers experienced ache, pain or discomfort related to scans. The most frequent cause for the sonographers’ ergonomic challenges were the patients’ physique (93,52%) and the need to obtain good image quality (83,33%). These reasons are non-controllable parameters for the obstetric sonographers and requires a solution, which ergonomically supports the sonographers in these situations.
All of the interviewed obstetric sonographers (n = 8) and immediate managers (n = 3) claimed they were interested in testing a solution based on robot-assisted ultrasound.