WOW! I just looked it up at m-w.com. I can't believe it. Jigawatt is actually the first listed pronunciation of the word "gigawatt". Incredible. Now I have really learned something. And now for you: The peak output capacity of Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State is 6GW! That's about enough for 5 deloreans!
Now this is what a class action should be all about. My only question is why the FTC hasn't gotten involved in this before now? The government has to really step up their activity against misleading advertisers.
Gator, you're next!
I just attended a conference on this at Columbia University this summer. It's a nice idea, but it still has a long way to go. Right now, there are 3 big problems with the system:
1) As stated before here, surgeries take longer = more time under anaesthesia, less times docs and OR staff and hospital resources have for other cases
2) COST! These robots are NOT cheap, and their operating expenses are huge. Combine that with the training time for docs to get used to the system, and you have one really expensive bot.
3) In *most* cases, these bots aren't doing surgeries that can't already be done laproscopically by a good surgeon. This makes point 2 all the more problematic, obviously. The promise of telemedicine with one of these bots hasn't really been done much either - most of the time the doc is sitting down right next to the patient at the "terminal"... One can only dream of the risk that would be introduced when you put a WAN link between the terminal and the robot, no matter how fast/low latency it is.
So it's a neat idea right now, but only for experimental purposes. My big problem with the conference and with techniques like this is that it's a waste of $$$ when there's so much "low hanging fruit" when it comes to Computing + Medicine. *Why is it* that docs are still WRITING perscriptions on paper pads, which can be forged, lost, etc, and can't be cross referenced automatically with other 'scrips that other physicians have perscribed for the same patient? Why is it that countless millions are wasted every year in filing paper forms, in transcribing records because insurance/docs/hospitals information systems are incompatible? How come every doc doesn't have charts/xrays/etc at any desktop/laptop/tabletpc they want in a hospital or in their own practice? How come docs don't have entire formularies of drugs at the tip of their fingers at all times? The tech for all this stuff has been around for years, but where is it? Come on!
My $0.02 ($0.03 CDN)
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WOW! I just looked it up at m-w.com. I can't believe it. Jigawatt is actually the first listed pronunciation of the word "gigawatt". Incredible. Now I have really learned something. And now for you: The peak output capacity of Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State is 6GW! That's about enough for 5 deloreans!
Now this is what a class action should be all about. My only question is why the FTC hasn't gotten involved in this before now? The government has to really step up their activity against misleading advertisers. Gator, you're next!
I just attended a conference on this at Columbia University this summer. It's a nice idea, but it still has a long way to go. Right now, there are 3 big problems with the system: 1) As stated before here, surgeries take longer = more time under anaesthesia, less times docs and OR staff and hospital resources have for other cases 2) COST! These robots are NOT cheap, and their operating expenses are huge. Combine that with the training time for docs to get used to the system, and you have one really expensive bot. 3) In *most* cases, these bots aren't doing surgeries that can't already be done laproscopically by a good surgeon. This makes point 2 all the more problematic, obviously. The promise of telemedicine with one of these bots hasn't really been done much either - most of the time the doc is sitting down right next to the patient at the "terminal"... One can only dream of the risk that would be introduced when you put a WAN link between the terminal and the robot, no matter how fast/low latency it is. So it's a neat idea right now, but only for experimental purposes. My big problem with the conference and with techniques like this is that it's a waste of $$$ when there's so much "low hanging fruit" when it comes to Computing + Medicine. *Why is it* that docs are still WRITING perscriptions on paper pads, which can be forged, lost, etc, and can't be cross referenced automatically with other 'scrips that other physicians have perscribed for the same patient? Why is it that countless millions are wasted every year in filing paper forms, in transcribing records because insurance/docs/hospitals information systems are incompatible? How come every doc doesn't have charts/xrays/etc at any desktop/laptop/tabletpc they want in a hospital or in their own practice? How come docs don't have entire formularies of drugs at the tip of their fingers at all times? The tech for all this stuff has been around for years, but where is it? Come on! My $0.02 ($0.03 CDN)