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Canadian Surgeons Perform Telerobotic Surgery
AndroidCat writes "While the equipment used isn't new, this operation was different because one of surgeons was 400km away. Dr. Mehran Anvari in Hamilton Ontario tele-operated instruments in North Bay General Hospital, supervised by Dr. Craig McKinley on site. The link was over a high priority routed Bell Canada connection. The patient, Ms. Fortier is doing quite well. Don't try this from home with a dialup connection."
please : don't slashdot them while they are operating some people...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
"Sir, we are getting a 404 from your heart."
I wonder if any of the special IP priorities that rarely get used outside of LANS (or in) were used.
Also, if any encryption was done, because id be concerned with achieving maximum latency possible.
They said over a commercial network, so I'd have to assume encryption, possibly with special hardware for it.
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Is this what you call a telephone operator?
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Sooner or later, an operation like this is going to fail. When questioned, the doctor will respond, "omfg!!!!! fucken lag!!!!!"
We already use micro-manipulators to do things so fine that we humans find it hard to control our own hands to do. There are many things a machine just does much better than we can.. things like zoom vision, ability to see from angles where we can not get our heads to, and doing precision tasks. Ever tried to make stitches as precise as a sewing machine?
The business end of the machines can be much smaller than our fingers, and tools on the machine are designed expressly for needed things. None of this "hand me the scapel, nurse" stuff. The machine can have as many arms and tools as the designers deem necessary.
And the machines can be made absolutely sterile. It is really hard to sterilize a human, and still have us functional.
It is really a tiny, very tiny, step from going to having a surgeon sitting next to a patient doing the surgery, to having one on the other side of the world doing it... ( the main problem is latency ).
The biggest advantage to the patient is that his need of surgical services may happen at any time - what it means is there is a world-wide pool of surgeons available to help - right now. They do not need to get scrubbed. If they are a critical care surgeon, by golly, they may have their end right in their den at their personal residence. Even if the surgeon was in a most unsanitary condition at the time of need, that would not be a factor. Time is. And that is what this technology gives us. Who is best equipped to meet the need... NOW.
This is what dreams are made of. This is why we go to work. To make things like this.
This is why we need technology.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
... if we can perform surgery via telerobotics, why wouldn't we be able to perform, say, guided experiments in space?
... of course, we'd have to deal with staying in contact with the shuttle while it orbited the Earth, and the lag associated with such distances ... and it wouldn't be quite so exciting ...
Given the inherent safety issues with routine space travel, how difficult would it be to create a remotely manned orbiter to carry out space based experiments?
It seems like there would be a tremendous number of benefits -- no direct risk to human life, smaller shuttle / more room for payloads, 24/7 operation (split shifts behind the controls), etc.
Just a thought. Any ideas?
This is probably the killer app. Being a med student myself (and having just watched Scrubs) I think the ability to have someone watching over your shoulder during an important operation would greatly assist confidence during learning surgical procedures -- especially during unusual times of the morning when the hospital is understaffed etc., and you're the house surgeon lumped with everyone walking in the door.
However, allowing dangerous operations to be undertaken in remote locations is probably not a great idea... without qualified staff physically on hand, I don't think you'd want to trust someone's life to an IP connection; otherwise, the next time some DDoS or Outlook worm strikes, servers aren't the only thing we lose.
By David Orenstein, December 2001 Issue
Earlier this fall, 68-year-old Madeleine Schaal volunteered to make medical history by allowing Jacques Marescaux and Michel Gagner to remove her gall bladder. What's so unusual about that? Only that she lay on an operating table in her hometown of Strasbourg, France, while the two doctors performing the surgery were in New York.
killer app? Excuse me? They're teaching med students to kill, these days, are they?
Man, no wonder malpractice is out of hand.
And being rabid is no excuse.
Wait a minute...it's not like there was a lady on an operating table, being prodded by a robot and no-one around save perhaps a pimply-faced computer geek to make sure everything was going well. There WAS a doctor overseeing events at the site. Conversely, it's not like the doctor on the other end was lounging by the pool, tweaking the trackpoint of his IBM ThinkPad. This technology wouldn't be used on a person unless it was proven safe and the benefits for outweighed possible risks (also, remember they weren't doing brain surgery on their maiden voyage--it was surgery to correct an acid-reflux problem, so if there were problems the risk of death would be quite low).
You're right--400 km isn't exactly a cross-continent trek, but keep in mind that a round trip by car would eat up eight hours of a skilled surgeon's time (and time is money), and even flying would take a few hours. Also, remember the surgery was in North Bay and performed by a doctor in Hamilton. North Bay isn't exacly a metropolitan hub--there's maybe what...50,000 people there? I don't think there are gonna be direct flights leaving hourly from Hamilton. Besides, do you know what the weather has been like in Ontario lately? Cold and horrible! Flight schedules aren't going to be reliable, and driving 400 km through a blizzard would be quite treacherous!
The next step is to start using this technology in places like Yellowknife. Yellowknife! Not exactly the kind of place that's teeming with specialised surgeons, and a doctor in Toronto can't easily hop a train, plane or taxi there, nor can the patient be safely relocated to Toronto without great expense and risk. You'd have to hop a 727 in Toronto to Edmonton, a lear jet to Ft. McMurray and a turboprop to Yellowknife (at best you might be able to avoid the stopover in Ft. McMurray)--or else spend a great deal of taxpayer's money in an already strained socialised haelthcare system on a special private direct flight.
Yup, telesurgery starts to look pretty appealing if you've been suffering on a long waiting list typical of the healthcare system in Canada, and it offers you the chance to get it done not only properly, but much sooner as well.
And if we put a taxi driver out of a job who the hell cares--he's probably an immigrant with 10 years of medical training and a long history of performing surgery in Pakistan, scaping out a living until all the immigration bullshit has been shoveled and he can get certified to work as a doctor in Canada. Maybe the money saved with this technology can make that process go faster so he can "do surgery by the pool" with Dr. Anvari. That old farmer in Cowcrap, Saskatchewan who needs his hernia fixed might appreciate the resulting shorter waiting time too...
as a surgeon, i have my misgivings about these types of surgery. the easy surguries a 4th year medical student can do. the hard ones are what we get paid for. laparoscopic surgery can have severe complications, like poking a big vessel called the AORTA. you need someone who can open up a patient and stop the bleeding RIGHT AWAY. there are times when you just can't use laparoscopy also, and you need actual feel. cost-wise, it may be cheaper buy a bus ticket for the patient to get the consultation 400 km away, than for every hospital in the country to have these robots in the OR.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
you just need someone who is able to take care of delicate medical high-tech equipment
These sort of people aren't cheap. The equipment isn't cheap. It has to be regularly serviced to ensure its ok. Its not the sort of stuff you stick in a remote place.
Hospitals have that kind of personnel anyway.
Big hospitals do. Small hospitals don't.
The actual point is that there are very peculiar operations that only a few surgeons in the world are able and willing to perform; e.g. the seperation of twins conjoined at their head
Right. And you think they perform solo? That you can just use any old scrub nurse to get this sort of equipment to work? That you can use any old anaesthetist to separate conjoined twins? That the twins can then just be dumped in any old hospital that probably doesn't even have an intensive care unit of any standard?
Now compare flying them around from continent to continent to having them stay at home, where they could still be able to do the same job.
You are still going to have to fly the rest of the team, so why not fly the surgeon too?
I work in this sort of environment, day in, day out. Its more than just the surgeon. Its a whole team, plus alot of technology. Most of which the people tend to forget happens. Half the time these sorts of places don't even have the equipment to make the diagnosis, never mind fix the problem.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.