The 5-foot-4-inch, 140-pound “telemedicine” robot is designed to help patients with health emergencies get more rapid treatment from specialists — especially at night, when hospital staff levels are lower.

“Telemedicine is about getting the right expertise to the right place at the right time,” said InTouch chief executive Yulun Wang. “If a patient has a stroke and comes into the emergency room, you better get a stroke neurologist there quickly. Otherwise, through sheer delay, it can be a matter of life or death.”

Called RP-VITA, the robot allows doctors to virtually visit patients in distant locations, carrying on conversations and even taking measurements in real time. Equipped with cameras, microphones, 3-D mapping sensors, a stethoscope, and a video screen “head” that automatically swivels to listen to voices, the robot transmits and receives video, audio, and navigation instructions over a Wi-Fi broadband connection.

Doctors, patients, and hospital staff control the robot with a specialized terminal or via a software application that runs on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer, and talk to one another using a Skype-like video chat displayed on the robot’s main screen.

“I can get data I never had over the phone,” said Dr. Jason Knight, a pediatric emergency care physician at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County in California, who has been testing a prototype of the robot. “There’s never been one time I’ve used it and said, ‘That was a waste of time.’ I always see something I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

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“A single human brain has more switches than all the computers, routers and Internet connections on Earth,” said Stephen J. Smith, PhD, a Stanford professor of molecular and cellular physiology, as he took a Macworld audience on a breathtaking HD video tour of the most amazing computer of all — the brain.

The audience was clearly moved by the beauty of the short film, which takes viewers on a virtual flight through the cerebral cortex of a mouse. “The finished product, titled Synaptaesthesia, was stunning,” Mauricio Grijalva wrote yesterday in a Macworld piece.

Smith and his team have pioneered a method for directly observing brain circuit development, structure and function called “array tomography.” Developed by a consortium of neuroscientists, computer scientists, and lab technicians from Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, this technique opens up a window on the brain that will provide researchers with insights on how to diagnose and treat neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. (Smith’s website also features an animated video of a human brain with Alzheimer’s disease.)

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Since telepsychiatry was introduced decades ago, video conferencing has been an increasingly accepted way to reach patients in hospitals, prisons, veterans’ health care facilities and rural clinics — all supervised sites.

But today Skype, and encrypted digital software through third-party sites like CaliforniaLiveVisit.com, have made online private practice accessible for a broader swa th of patients, including those who shun office treatment or who simply like the convenience of therapy on the fly.

One third-party online therapy site, Breakthrough.com, said it has signed up 900 psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and coaches in just two years. Another indication that online treatment is migrating into mainstream sensibility: “Web Therapy,” the Lisa Kudrow comedy that started online and pokes fun at three-minute webcam therapy sessions, moved to cable (Showtime) this summer.

“In three years, this will take off like a rocket,” said Eric A. Harris, a lawyer and psychologist who consults with the American Psychological Association Insurance Trust. “Everyone will have real-time audiovisual availability. There will be a group of true believers who will think that being in a room with a client is special and you can’t replicate that by remote involvement. But a lot of people, especially younger clinicians, will feel there is no basis for thinking this. Still, appropriate professional standards will have to be followed.”

The pragmatic benefits are obvious. “No parking necessary!” touts one online therapist. Some therapists charge less for sessions since they, too, can do it from home, saving on gas and office rent. Blizzards, broken legs and business trips no longer cancel appointments. The anxiety of shrink-less August could be, dare one say ... curable?

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