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Robots in Hospitals

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the but-can-they-make-a-good-martini dept.

Dieppe writes "Robot couriers are being used in hospitals CNN. The robots are being used as delivery 'bots to deliver medicine and other hospital supplies. They are polite, and even can be overly cautious. I wonder if at night they supply them with saws, arms and other cutting devices and let them at each other? Turns out they're cost effective as well!"

13 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Workplace shortages by dg41 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I suppose that the medical industry has to do SOMETHING about the lack of employees in the growing healthcare industry.

  2. little has changed.. by tedtimmons · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The RoboCart has a fixed path determined by tape placed in a hallway

    So basically, nothing has changed since Tron?

    Or since the kit-based "line follower" robots, for that matter.

    .

    .

    (Yes, I know that most other bots are smarter than that, I used to live across the street from Pyxis. Get over it, I did RTFM.)

  3. security advantageous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    There are some serious advantages to using robots more intensively in hospitals. For one thing, you don't have to worry about robots walking off with narcotics intended for the patients-which is more than you can say for a big chunk of doctors/nurses and other hospital staff.

  4. Robo-sourcing? by manabadman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    University of Virginia Hospital could save as much as $218,000 a year if it replaced 15 human couriers with six HelpMate robots, which would pay for themselves in little over three years.

    Its not just IT workers that are in danger, and its not just Indian workers that are taking away jobs.

    But thats just how the world works. Invention brings about efficiency but it also opens new avenues for humans. After all H. Ford's assembly line has created a net gain in jobs, right?

    I for one welcome our new ... bah, hello nurse :)

    1. Re:Robo-sourcing? by Short+Circuit · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's no good reason to defend industries tied tightly to obsolete technology.

      Unless you're a politician, of course.

      --
      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    2. Re:Robo-sourcing? by Saeger · · Score: 3, Insightful
      This technological progress will unfold much faster than you might intuitively assume from the rate of TODAY'S progress. Read Marshall Brain's RoboticNation for a good look into the still-pre-singularity period of this coming robotic future. From fast-food, to trucking, to war, robots will be replacing many millions of jobs over the next decade or so, but until society adapts to this reality, humans will still need to 'work for a living' to justify their existence.

      I think in these circumstances, a communist or socialist system begins to look good

      You can't use the C-word anymore (no, not Cunt - I mean Communism). Even I wouldn't advocate pure communism or socialism, though, but instead a kind of capitalist meritocracy where there's still some ownership, but not to the outrageous excess we see today. Yeah, I'm for limits on personal and corporate wealth. *gasp*.

      In a future where the vast majority of work has been automated, the means of most production should be owned by the people, and all the newly technologically-unemployed "useless eaters" should get their fair share of this automated abundance (rather than starving and revolting), but if you're a little greedier and want a BIGGER PIECE OF THE RESOURCE PIE, then you've got to somehow earn the whuffie by being a 'better' human being than the other 6-billion well-fed humans. What will a leisure society value the most (that can't be automated and owned by a monopoly)?

      A little farther down the road and 'molecular manufacturing' enters the picture, in which the means of production can actually be owned by each and every person because there's no longer a need for a robotic infrastructure to move around the fruits of our old bulk-technology. With nanotech, each person could once again become a self-sufficient island, recycling 'garbage' molecules into food... bla bla.

      --

      --
      Power to the Peaceful
    3. Re:Robo-sourcing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I find it interesting that, despite the obvious deficiencies of these robots (getting stuck, etc), six of them would be sufficient to replace fifteen human couriers. Are we meatbags really such inefficient workers?

  5. Just a twist on warehouse robots. by elucubra · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They have been doing this kind of stuff, with heavy loads in automated factories and warehouses. What is new?

  6. Re:And...? by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can actually filter that out.

    Other cool things would be to use force-feedback combined with imaging technologies so that surgeons could do stuff like make critically sensitive areas seem rigid, like brain tissue or blood vessels around a tumour.

    The VR aspects of it too also let you do image and motion scaling as well as work at weird angles, so that certain types of microsurgery become possible, you could sew arteries like pairs of jeans, or operate on a beating heart.

    Surgery is particularly a good application for this stuff because it's relatively easy to simulate the surgeon's tools.

  7. Re:And...? by seafortn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One current issue is feedback - when working with small vessels, like the coronary arteries, it's really easy to pull a stitch right through the wall of the vessel and (at worst) have to start all over again - so the surgeons doing this kind of work often rely heavily on their sense of touch and experience - not sure whether this system has a good fix for that - it's hard to tell with the eye how taut a suture is - maybe a gague to tell the surgeon how much force is on the suture would be a good idea...

    I am not a cardio thoracic surgeon, but I've watched a few bypasses...

  8. Ancient news by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful
    When I was transferred to Naval Hospital San Diego (now NavMedCenSD, I think), they'd had pretty much that exact system in use for several years. You'd occasional have to get out of the way of one of the little automatic carts as they followed their trails throughout the hospital. The freaky part was when you'd be walking down a long hallway, two little doors would slide open on opposite walls in front of you, a cart would come out from one wall and scoot into the other, and the doors would close behind it. I always wanted to duck in behind one but military chain-of-command is notoriously unsympathetic to tunnel hacking.

    Then again, military medicine seems to be quite a few years ahead of times. By the time I'd graduated from Operating Room Tech school in San Diego in 1993, I'd scrubbed in on many arthroscopic gall bladder removals and pretty much took them for granted. I was pretty surprised a couple of years ago to see a local newspaper bragging about how our hospital had recently acquired the equipment for "state-of-the-art arthroscopic gall bladder removal". One of my friends supervised the NHSD's digital imaging system in '94 or so, and the local civilian facility is just now completing a switchover to the same idea.

    I wouldn't do it again if I had the choice, but we definitely had the coolest toys to play with.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  9. the kids ... the kids ... by XMichael · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This will make hosptials even more scary for an 8 year olds. I hope they make special effort to make the robots look cute!

    --
    Gamblers Forum
  10. 1920's technology by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Pneumatic tubes would probably work better. If you REALLY want a robot, the robot could do the routing.