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Would You Let a Robot Stick You With a Needle?
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum has a story about a robot that uses infra red and ultrasound to image veins, picks the one with best bloodflow, and then sticks a needle in. (video included). Veebot started as an undergrad project and the creators are aiming for better performance than a human phlebotimist before going for clinical trials. Robodracula anyone?"
I'll always take a robot over a human when my safety is in question. I want a human involved, but predictable error that can be controlled is far preferable to unknowable error modes of humans.
As soon as it's been QA'd extremely well. I don't want to be a test subject for a poorly designed/constructed system.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Given some of the stories I've heard both from people studying to be pflebs, and both personal and secondhand accounts of *BAD* pflebotomists, I'd probably trust a robot much more to not fuck it up than a human. Honestly while one could do some damage if improperly programmed, there's plenty of pflebs who can manage just as bad of a job themselves.
There's probably also a few that can do an suitably faster/better job, but they'll most likely keep work either in pediatrics or ER wards, where the human touch either is important, or more suitable for it's critical thinking capabilities in situations where robots would have difficulty operating.
I'd be willing to give it a try. I've been stuck by enough nurses in my life that I'd be willing to give a robot a try. I wonder if it would identify the same spot that the human phlebotomists always use; I've given blood enough times that I have a nice scar to show where the needle ought to go.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
They used to jab the tip of your finger. That's just about the most sensitive, painful place they could choose to get a blood sample. Fingertips have the greatest concentration of nerves. Being medical professionals, they of all people should know that. So why couldn't they prick some other spot, like the forearm? It really seemed like they were at best indifferent to causing their patients unnecessary pain. At worst, I wondered if some of them were sadists.
Some years ago, a change in this procedure came along. Now, they prick the side of the finger, not the tip. Much, much less painful.
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I think you mean, "Robo-Dr. Acula!" (Video)
I had a trombosis and got blood taken for amalysis more than once per week for half a year. Some nurses are good at it, some suck. And after hitting each of the standard places 10 times only the ones who are good at it will sudded without additional pain.
I would recomment/prefer to build the system not as a robot but as scanner which guides the nurse and indicates the right position to her does the fine positioning on the mm scale.
Machines and computers are ideally suited to many of the tasks that make up medical care. Autonomous systems are already omnipresent throughout medicine and its only a matter of time before we trust them ahead of error-prone humans, especially for tasks that require fast reaction, repetition, or precision.
Future generations may gasp at the thought that at one point in our history we went under the knife to mortal hands.
Your car was built by robots, yeah some parts are still done by hand. But a huge part of the manufacture process is done by robots. People are happy to assume the car is not going to break and risk their life every day. So why not a needle?
One thing about a human doctor though is that they often know what it feels like to be in pain. A robot doesn't as it only has an algorithm. A nurse, when she sticks the needle in, will notice how you react, whether you feel pain or not. I would think the robot would need to have some manner of sensing if it is doing something harmful or painful to the patient.
However, I have had doctors and nurses that are completely insensitive to their patients, so if the robot can get it right each time it might be a better alternative. I've had sessions where it took 4 tries for the nurse to get the intravenous in correctly. It was not a very pleasant experience. I'd let the robot give it a try after that.
Nurses, and whomever tries to take blood from me has a hell of a time and usually costs me a bit of pain. Recently I had to go to ER for some chest pains. It took them 2+ hours to get blood out of me. They never put an IV in me like they were planning.
So yes, I'd take a robot doing this. Technology has advanced far enough that machines can be responsible enough to do stuff like this, imo.
Be seeing you...
No, I think they mean IT-O from Star Wars.
I'm not worried about it. Robots like this could be great life savers for remote communities that have bad medical care. Or even great for people bedridden at home that need fairly consistent medical attention.
What will be interesting is that at some point the robots will start automating more and more... and we might see some sophisticated autodocs. That's going to be a far future development. But this is where it starts folks.
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I could see something like this useful in law inforcement. Rather than train a LEO to draw blood or have a medical professional there, have a machine like this. I for one would NOT let a LEO stick me with a needle....
Karma: Bad
I'd let the robot show a human the vein, but it would stop there. just spent 3 months in hospital, needles every 3 days, only one nurse used an infra-red device to locate a vein, many were told to come back later, they only get 2 chances!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
A nurse once tried to draw blood from an acquaintance of mine, and ended up paralyzing him for over a year before he managed to get the use of his arm back. They were sure he was never going to have the feeling returned to his arm. If the machine can reliably find the right areas the stick then more power to them. With nurses and other individuals, it's still often a matter of trial an error, especially on certain patients with harder to find veins.
A druggy can do it, why should a robot fail where a dopehead succeeds?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The skin on the tips of your fingers is both thick and generally well-vascularized, (but not so much that there is any chance of hitting a larger vessel).
They don't have to pinch your skin to force sufficient blood to the surface to collect. (This causes bruising in people with fragile skin.)
There is a very high concentration of nerve endings, the pain receptors are not nearly as dense.
There's no muscle, which is sore for some time when injured.
It's consistent from person to person; a forearm stick will vary widely depending on the thickness of the skin, fat, and muscle layers. That's not a worry on the fingertip, where everybody will have enough skin that that's the layer they'll always be drawing from.
Like they could today...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sure I would - after I had read the studies about its reliability and watched you do it first.
I have had really good people take blood from a vein (including a nervous pathology collector who did a perfect job) and at least one agonising experience (medical registrar).
At least you don't have to make inane conversation with robodracula while it drills for oil in your arm (oops, that was the medical registrar).
I am anarch of all I survey.
1 billion blood draws a year at 90% accuracy making 100 million blue of skin death events :-)
G
That's why hospitals have generators. No blackouts in hospitals, unless the power is out so long the hospital runs out of fuel.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Most of the times they screw up when tapping blood from me so I would have more faith in a robot
What if the robot was operated by the nurse? o_O
I haven't looked it up but there has got do be robot needle porn out there. Those guys would respond with a very enthusiastic "Yes!".
It just has to be better than the majority of junior medical staff that do this sort of thing, especially freshman medics and nursing students. Yes, some more experienced staff will not be helped by this, but improving the level of care for most people is still a worthwhile goal.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Would You Let a Robot Stick You With a Needle?
Is BDSM Involved?
My wife is in the medical field. She recently got a new job at a new place that uses a robotic needle. Having been the person that normally administers the needle she was a bit concerned about the whole robot thing but after she started using it she says it's far superior to doing it by hand. She's told me the robot is so good at it she's been told by the patients that they don't even feel the needle go in. Then there's the added benefit of no needle sticks. At least once a year my wife would have a needle stick accident. They are complex in the medical field, involve lots of paperwork, blood tests, co-operation from the patient to get tested for HIV etc... When you handle that many needles, that often it's just going to happen.
Since it will be less error-prone, and potentially cleaner, than a human.
After all, robotic hip replacement has been around for a while, and has proven both faster and better....
You'd have to be pretty damn confident to sign up for a robotic vasectomy, tho...
You're both wrong. It's the Medic Droid.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm actually really surprised that people are so paranoid about a needle jab machine, and not so worried about, say, the drive-by-wire systems in their own cars. I would expect that a medical machine would be at least as rigorously tested and reviewed, given the lessons learned from Therac.
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As someone who has an incredibly difficult time having blood drawn and IVs inserted, I'd happily have a robot do the job. They're less likely to go fishing. Every. single. time I tell the person with the needle that my veins run and hide, roll, twist, and blow out, and I'm always told "aw, don't worry, I'll get it the first time". The only person to ever get my vein the first time was a peds ER nurse. I spent a week in the hospital 2 years ago and ended up with bruises up and down both arms..
... the whole process doesn't start with the Jab-Bot asking "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" in a snarky voice.
I'll keep my big-breasted nurse, thank you very much. ...unless you can add breasts and a nice ass to the robot? Hmmm...
The G
Even deeper than you think. It probably started with no one ever doing a hazard analysis on the design, which lead to no one ever realizing that the machine can and will kill people, given the wrong kind of malfunction.
If no one ever says "Hey, this thing can kill people, what do we do to prevent that?", then no prevention is ever going to take place.
Inside the archway, an inflatable cuff tightens around the arm, holding it in place and restricting blood flow to make the veins easier to see.
So far so goo, standard procedure ... but wait, a few lines later:
The vein is examined with ultrasound to confirm that it is large enough and has sufficient blood flowing through it.
How much blood do they expect to flow through veins that have been blocked by external pressure? I hope it's just a problem with the article, not with the actual design.
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Is this a medicalbot or a sexbot, I can't tell which due to the prick.
Aside from that yes I'd allow a bot to needle me. It would probably be better than an unsteady hand of a tech and much more accurate. I really can't see it hurting worse than if a human were to do it.
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Robot junkies are coming
However visions of the Aesculaptor Mark 3 from Logan's Run may make me conclude that the good old fashioned Mark I Eye Ball is still up to the task.
I think after years of surviving being stuck in the arm by humans I can decline to avail myself of this one particular advancement without feeling I've suddenly gone Luddite
-jon
I think having that machine draw my blood would make me nervous. They need to combine this with an Oculus Rift. The patient wears the goggles and gets to choose from a selection of sexy male or female virtual nurses, so that while the procedure is going on it feels and looks like there is an attractive person drawing their blood.
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When I was a Navy Corpsman I did blood draws all the time. I also taught others how to do them by letting them use my arm for their first 'stick'. I can tell you that we are always just guessing that a vein will be good enough to draw blood. On men and women with large visible veins its a different issue. They are easy to see and they usually have good blood flow. However they tend to roll to one side or the other when you hit them with a needle. On those with veins that are hidden we are sticking 'blind'. We do our best to feel for a pulse in locations we know there to be veins and then stick the needle in until its hits the vein. Usually we hit the vein. Sometime though we don't and sometimes the vein just collapses.
The tools this robot has are a major advantage. IR to see the veins and ultrasound to tell if there is good blood flow. Those two tools would help most any phlebotomist increase their accuracy rate. The only thing that would concern me is that I didn't see or read anything that indicates the robot can tell how deep the vein is located. Sometimes they are on or near the surface and other times they are much deeper.
I would let the robot test on me just like I used to let new corpsman test on me.
Have you ever been in a hospital? ORs are usually interior rooms with no windows. The windows go in recovery rooms, and even then often sparingly. A doctor would be of little use with no lights. How's you EEG work with no power?
Based on your definition of "future" the future has been here a while.
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In some countries, blood sampling is usually done by nurses, which means most doctors never practice with a needle. The robot may be a better pick than the doctor, here.
The trick is to insist that they use a butterfly needle, both based on my experience with veins damaged in childhood from tons of blood draws & IVs, and that of a nurse that advised me as a kid during one needlephobic freakout. Winged needles go in at an extremely shallow angle that's much less likely to make the vein roll or misbehave, they're held by the "wings" at the base of the needle with far more accuracy, and the syringe is at the other end of a long tube so it won't move the needle when they switch vials; IME as an adult, they also don't cause as much damage or scar tissue.
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Get this technology to the point of viable deployment and I'll gladly let it go to work. The human has to rely on experience, instinct, and knowledge. The 'bot can actually see what's going on in ways a human can't with the naked eye.
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