Robots in Hospitals

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!"

Comments

And...?

[ResidntGeek]

Robots are also being used in delicate surgeries, to ease hand tremors by the surgeon. They use various methods of control, but the basic idea is the doctor is in a different room and the robot in the operating room, weilding the scalpel, clamps, camera, etc.

Re:And...?

[stratjakt]

Not only that, but it can magnify the image, and reduce the doctors movements.

That is, the doctor can do virtual surgery on a heart thats blown up to appear to him to be six feet across. He removes/cuts/does whatever to a managable six inch chunk of it, and the robot replicates that on the real heart, in sub-millimeter fashion.

Pretty cool stuff. Still very much in development though, but there have been some early trials.

Re:And...?

[CFBMoo1]

Here's a link to my old colleges CS department. They have surgical simulators with force feedback in the works when I was graduating. I did some minor work on the lumbar puncture simulator for a final semester project. Was really fun stuff.

Millersville University's Research in Haptics and Surgical Simulation

RoboDoc

[yanestra]

In Germany, an US product called RoboDoc was working for several years doing pre-programmed hip joint operations. Several hundreds of victims are now preparing to sue the hospitals - the ensanguined operations have led to severe destructions in nerves, muscles and bones.

Re:RoboDoc

[theCat]

Just to show what a small world it is... I did some db development for the animal doctor/surgeon who perfected the technique on dogs in his vet practice, using technology developed by a guy who died just before it went gold.

I guess hip problems are common in some canine species, so the technique go a lot of trial while doing some for animals. And dogs come in many sizes so the techniques once refined could scale easily according to mathematical models.

This was about 10 years ago. If it's not the same outfit, then there was some parallel work going on. In any event, deploying robots to do hip replacements was a no-brainer; hips are done all the time and are very mechanical, yet are easy to screw up and often require re-tooling at a later date. The guy I worked for was very excited that "permanent" hip replacements were in the offing. Certainly the dogs seemed to do very well, running and jumping and the whole thing. Miracles, really, according to him.

But dogs can't report the same kinds of subtle post-op issues a human could and would. Maybe it was a technology still not ready for prime time?

Technology in hospitals

[DoctorDeath]

My mother (an RN) was recently complaining about the hospital she works in going to using computers in place of paper to do all the patient reports. She had a fit when I told her the local hospitals are using laptops and scanners in every room and medicines are kept lockedup until the nurse scans the patient ID. After the computer verifies the patient it then unlocks the proper drawer so the nurse can get the proper medicine. Now this comes along and she will end up in a nut house for sure.

Rx Bots Make Sense

[grunt107]

These would be very useful in performing all the menial hospital tasks and free up nurses to do the more important stuff. For instance, why not have bots that empty bedpans, scrub/disinfect the floors (and vac up the occasional 'urp). It would also be beneficial to have 'bots for retrieving/turning the hefty or bedridden patients. This would also help in lowering the nursing staff injuries due to fatty-tossing (I have relatives that routinely lift 500+ lb'ers).

Re:security advantageous

[puck01]

Um, I'm not sure why this would be modded offtopic. I'm a doctor and work in hospitals quite a bit. This is a real problem. The human couriers are often paid little so competence is not the norm for many of these workers. There are often long delays gettin meds up to the floors as a result. Also, drug abuse or selling does occur among the staff and MDs despite many obsticals. Obviously, a robot has no interest in taking drugs for its own purposes so this is clearly a real advantange.

We have one of these things in one of the hospitals I work in routinely. So far its done a good job. I haven't heard any complaints yet. Plus, its surprisingly entertaining to jump back and forth in its path forcing it to try and find a route around you. this doesn't help expediency however :)

helpful, but annoying

[scrod98]

I remember having this in the mid 90's when my mother was in the hospital, used to deliver drugs from the pharmacy. The bad part was that it would come on the floor, stop in front of the nurses station and

PING

I HAVE A DELIVERY

PING

On a loop every 30 seconds until someone responded (annoying when you aren't well). IIRC it had numeric code and a different compartment for each nurses station, so no stealing from others.

Funniest was when it would encounter a wet floor sign or similar, and didn't know the difference btw that and a human. Would say "Excuse me, I need to get thru" 2-3x, then back up and go around.

Wonder if they had to pay royalties to Steven Hawking for having the robot simulate his voice?

Slow news day?

[asackett]

AGVS (Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems) have been in use in factories, hospitals, prisons, jails, mail rooms, etc. for a long time. The last real job I had (prior to becoming self employed) was as Service Manager for a robotics company that built AGVS with capacities ranging from 50lbs. to 6000lbs. and carried everything from the mundane mail and laundry to (exciting stuff!) explosives, and in one installation, people. Inmates, in fact, from the jail to the courthouse and back via an underground tunnel. Get busted, ride a robot!

One client company who shall remain nameless (hint: starts with an "I" and ends with "ntel") had problems with jealous employees sabotaging and abusing the AGV's in their factories, believing that they were replacing human workers. Maybe they did replace human workers, maybe they were responsible for keeping more jobs in the US than would have been offshored without them. I dunno.

Those AGV's all had voices, and were polite. If you were detected on or near the (buried) guidepath, the vehicle would slow and politely say, "Excuse me." If you didn't step away, the vehicle would stop and repeat "excuse me" every so often until you did. (It was comical to encounter a stalled machine asking a cardboard box to move.) Once you moved, it would say, "Thank you" and proceed on its way. Upon arriving at a destination where it expected human interaction, it would stop and say, "Hello."

We built AGV's that could open and close doors, ride elevators, and accept their marching orders via wireless LAN or manual entry. The more complex installations had central controllers that could dispatch a vehicle from anywhere in the facility to anywhere else, tell it what to do at each stop along the way, route them on alternate paths to avoid congestion, etc. They were adept at avoiding collisions with other vehicles, and taking themselves out of service as they neared battery depletion -- when they'd seek an opportunity charger and put themselves on charge. Fun stuff.

The mail delivery vehicle in our factory received far less maintenance than it ought to have, and sometimes wandered into a wall, where it would patiently ask, "excuse me", until it was rescued. So I named it Harvey (because it was a Wallbanger). One of our more powerful machines, during prototype testing, moved Harvey's favorite wall by several inches -- I wonder if they were involved in some kind of conspiracy.

That company, Apogee Robotics, ceased operations ten years ago and certainly wasn't without competition. This stuff ain't news!