Robotic Telesurgery by Remote Surgeons

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a few years, telesurgery performed by multi-armed robots remotely controlled by real surgeons located hundreds or thousands of kilometers away will become commonplace. Today, Canadian doctors from the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) are developing the technology for NASA. Their goal is to build a portable robotic unit that would be used in space missions, war zones and remote areas within five years. So far, the experiments already done in Canada and for NASA are extremely encouraging. But read more for additional details and pictures of a real surgeon controlling such a robot."

Comments

Don't try that on the Internet until ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... QoS hooks are in and solid.

This is a very strong argument for tiered bandwidth - so ISPs can guarantee that surgical waldo packets take priority over, say, downloads of the latest release of an OS or a new movie.

It's one thing to hiccup when you're handling a VoIP packet. It's quite another when you're handling the content of a feedback loop including a video camera, a surgeon, a scalpel, and a vital organ.

Awesome.

[RoffleTheWaffle]

Now we can outsource the medical field to India, too. *rimshot*

what is the maximum allowed network latency

[Rune Tnnesen]

As a med student and sysadmin I just wondered over a couple of potentially isues

What the maximum allowed network latency and thereby the maximum allowed operation distance be? Could somebody come with an answer?
will it do for spacetravel?
I mean they had to make the marsrovers autonomously, due to transmitting time.

They say they will take it to the battlefield. Come on it is monstreus piece of equipment, with a weight of approx a ton. For what reason wil they take it to the battlefield.
Not enough surgeons available at the frontline military service?
They will still need staff at operation ward, nurses anesthesiologist and so on.

We have a few of these robots at the university hospitals. Normally we have a group of surgens stading by just in case things goes wrong. We do not trust the machine totally.

I really do hope they are hackerproff. What and opportunity to blackmail people.
"Pay me or your husbend will end up without his left kneecap. Your VISA number please"

Regards Rune

The AMA? Maybe but there's bigger force...

[WidescreenFreak]

You're forgetting the lawyers, though. Can you imagine what malpractice lawyers are going to think? Imagine them trying to sue a doctor who botched a remote surgery in a country with no kind of extradition treaty! I think that the trial lawyers of America would fight this more than the doctors if the goal is to "internationalize" medicine. Allowing remote surgeries will completely screw up many lawyer's ability to go for those higly lucrative malpractice lawsuits if the doctor is outside of the country's borders. But I'll bet that they would fight like crazy to allow it to be used domestically where the doctor and patient are both in the same country because of the ease of filing a lawsuit.

Personally, with the exception of minor, routine surgery, there is no frickin' way I'd want anyone but a real doctor and real nurses right there with me. Even the slightest possibility of a network dropout while the scalpel is cutting is terrifying to say the least. I don't care how much redundancy there is between me and the remote doctor. There is no way to 100% guarantee a solid connection at any given time, although I'm sure that a number of /.ers would like to try to convince me otherwise. At least with a doctor right there I can hear him say, "Oops!" instead of trusting some doctor who can mute his microphone from a thousand miles away -- and, damn it, they better guarantee <1 ms response time! :)

Honestly, I think that you asked the right question, but you asked it the wrong way.

waldos can be good

[hogghogg]

I didn't RTFA, but a thorassic surgeon I know told me that using a waldo in lung surgery can be very useful, because the machinery can scale down your motions, making it possible to perform extremely precise, tiny cuts and stitches, etc; for some operations a waldo is indispensible, apparently. I have to admit that this doesn't have much to say about the idea of remote operation, but I, for one, will welcome our scalpel-wielding aluminum overlords when I need some surgery.