Mr. Roboto might do the jobs nobody wants to do, but Dr. Roboto does the ones no one has time to do. In busy hospitals, where life or death is on the line, a competent robot can help keep things calm.
Robots are increasingly finding themselves employed in clinical environments, where their orderliness and detachment are prized skills. They've started with handing out meals and dispensing pills, and one robot even performs surgery with the assistance of a real, carbon-based surgeon. But it's possible that a robot might one day be making medical assessments all on its own.
IBM's wonderbot Watson, for example, wants to help cure cancer. In partnership with the New York Genome Centre (NYGC), the machine is aiding oncologists in DNA-based treatments for glioblastoma - the most common type of brain cancer, which kills more than 13,000 Americans every year. According to IBM, doctors are forced to correlate massive amounts of data, from full genomic sequencing to reams of medical journals, new studies, and clinical records - at a time when medical information is doubling every five years. But Watson's quick computerized brain could be the key to unlocking new resources and making greater strides toward patients' health.
It will be a while before nanobots swim through your system, but these robots are already making their way to your bedside.
1. Da Vinci Surgical System: Performing Surgery
Surgeons are sometimes thought of as arrogant, but what about robotic? The da Vinci Surgical System uses robotics to help surgeons perform minimally invasive surgery. Tiny, precision tools carry out a surgeon's actions via a controller and offer the doctor a 3D, HD view of the surgical site. Patients are said to benefit from less trauma and shorter recovery times. Just because the system is robotic doesn't mean it's perfect though; the da Vinci system has been named in a number of lawsuits. Perhaps Google and Johnson & Johnson can work out the kinks with their own surgical robot.
2. InTouch TeleStroke Solution: Making Bedside Visits
The outcome of a stroke largely depends on the time in which it's treated. For patients who live in areas where there is not a stroke team or stroke centre to administer specialized care, the lack of expertise and the minutes lost in administering critical care can have a very negative outcome. InTouch's TeleStroke Solution lets stroke specialists from around the country visit with patients and consult with physicians who are onsite via a screen, as well as give the specialist access to medical imaging results.
3. Tmsuk Robots: Providing Guidance
Hospitals are often cold and sterile, but these Japanese robots brighten things up. Tmsuk's receptionist and guidance robots are in use at Aizu Central Hospital, where they greet visitors, carry their luggage, and bring them to where they need to go.
4. TUG: Doing the Heavy Lifting
Hospital food is notoriously bad, but the nutrition it provides is essential to getting well. Aetheon's Tug is a compact bot that can transport and deliver meals, medication, linens, and lab specimens. It navigates hallways with its on-board map and smart autonomous navigation, narrating its moves so as not to scare anyone.
5. SimMan 3G: Training Doctors and Nurses
Patient-simulation robots expose those training to be medical professionals to very real emergencies and scenarios before they encounter them with living, breathing patients. Robots like SimMan 3G can display a range of physiological symptoms, vocalize distress, and react to medications in realistic ways.
6. Robot-Rx: Dispensing Drugs
Pharmacists in hospitals do much more than just dispense pills, they help decide on appropriate treatments and dosages for patients, work on clinical drug trials, and create medications on site. The Robot-Rx from Aesynt can fill the majority of prescriptions and keep track of inventory to streamline dispensation and free up pharmacists for other tasks.
7. RIO: Resurfacing Joints
If you're going in for some resurfacing of your hip or knee to improve joint functionality, your doctor might just be assisted by the Rio Robotic Arm Interactive Orthopaedic System. The Rio and a surgeon perform a Makoplasty, a resurfacing of the joint to ease some of the symptoms of osteoarthritis.
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