Bringing Surgical Robots Into the Mainsteam

The New York Times is running a story about how using robots to perform surgical operations has been transformed from a controversial dream to reality. Dr. Frederic Moll abandoned his residency for Silicon Valley and helped to revolutionize the industry. The lengthy article also discusses some of his innovations. We've discussed various robot-assisted medical procedures in the past. From the Times: "'I was struck by the size of the incision and injury created just to get inside the body,' Dr. Moll says. 'It felt antiquated.' He took the idea to his employer, Guidant, a medical device company. Guidant decided that robotic surgery was too futuristic and too risky, so Dr. Moll rounded up backers, resigned, and in 1995, founded Intuitive Surgical. The company prospered by proving that robots could deftly handle rigid surgical tools like scalpels and sewing needles through small incisions in a patient's skin."

Comments

The laws and open sore software

[Harmonious Botch]

I can forsee two possible futures:

Laws that say that only an MD is allowed to use a surgical robot, and that a manufacturer can sell them only to MDs, and that you can only sell/distribute software for them if you are an MD. This may seem paranoid perhaps, but consider the lawws restricting x-rays: You can buy an x-ray machine for checking welding seams or for x-raying dogs + cats, but you can't use it on humans.

Or there could be a much looser future, in which anyone can buy one, and anyone can program one. If I were having surgery done by a robot, I'd want one that was running open source software.

Re:The laws and open sore software

[NMerriam]

The FDA approves all medical devices like automated external defibrillators and surgical robots. It's a long, expensive process that is considerably less fungible than, say, pharmaceutical trials.

I've worked with a lot of the surgical robots and voice control systems available in the past decade, and they're much more reliable and consistent in manual performance than whatever random surgeon happens to be on call that day. Sure, a doc always has to be driving the thing -- they're nowhere near autonomous (that's still decades away for even simple things), but the point of the robotics is not to remove the expert decision-making of the doctor, it's to eliminate the mechanical aspects of surgery where most things go unpredictably wrong. Just brushing your glove up lightly against the wrong piece of anatomy can cause major internal bleeding, not to mention how difficult it is to precisely control your hands for every split second of a 14-hour long procedure where doctors might have to trade off several times with all sorts of tools still inside the patient.

The robotics also make an unbeatable teaching tool. The surgeons in 50 years are going to be vastly superior to even the docs we have today, because they'll not only be able to watch from the chief's POV from day one of their residency, they'll be used to rehearsing every procedure in the simulator beforehand and handing off the controls to different specialists elsewhere for a few minutes whenever they need.

Re:I bet...

[Anonymous Coward]

These machines don't have any knowledge of anatomy.

They are more like "remote control" surgeons than robot surgeons.

It's basically laparoscopic surgery taken to a new level of miniaturization.

analogous to fly-by-wire in planes versus old hydraulic connections.

A day at the hospital

[Rui del-Negro]

Welcome to MS Surgery 2008 (c) Microsoft 1983-1992

> run appendix

appendix is undefined.

> run "appendix"

appendix not found.

> run "Appendix"

- Appendix script started...
- Setup complete.
- Loading scalpel vector data.
- Reticulating splines.
- Blade initialized.
- Cutting...

[Message from AutoUpdater: an update for LifeSupport.sys is available and will now be installed.]

LifeSupport.sys has performed an illegal operation and was terminated.
Restart? Y/[N]

> y

Restart? Y/[N]

> Y

LifeSupport.sys failed to start due to error:
0000 - General error

Patient has terminated unexpectedly.