The hospital is also committed to working through its Women's Primary Care Center, the largest single provider of reproductive health services and primary care to low-income women in the state, and the Providence Community Health Centers to make the new robotic system available to all women.

"Women & Infants' mission has always been to provide care regardless of a patient's ability to pay. Our robotics program will include a formal outreach plan designed to make this cutting-edge technology available to the uninsured and underinsured in our area," Howes explained.


Possessing a robotic system on campus opens new educational avenues as well, noted Charles Rardin, MD, a surgeon with the hospital's Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery. A teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Women & Infants will now be able to train fellows, residents, community physicians and surgeons in robotic surgery and other high-level surgical techniques.

"A robotic surgery program will ensure that Women & Infants continues to attract superb medical professionals, and enable us to teach the next generation of care givers," he said.

In addition, the Robotic Surgery Program will begin training interested community obstetrician-gynecologists in robotic surgery so they can offer the technology to their patients.

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation's leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. The primary teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics, Women & Infants is the seventh largest obstetrical service in the country with more than 9,000 deliveries per year. In 2009, Women & Infants opened the country's largest, single-family room neonatal intensive care unit.
Women & Infants has been designated as a Breast Center of Excellence from the American College of Radiography; a Center for In Vitro Maturation Excellence by SAGE In Vitro Fertilization; a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence by the National Institutes of Health; and a Neonatal Resource Services Center of Excellence. It is one of the largest and most prestigious research facilities in high risk and normal obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics in the nation, and is a member of the National Cancer Institute's Gynecologic Oncology Group. The hospital was named Rhode Island's Best Place to Work by Providence Business News and a National Center of Excellence in Women's Health by the federal government. For information about Women & Infants, log on to womenandinfants.org, and for the name of a physician on the Women & Infants' staff, call the Health Line at 1-800-921-9299.


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