This week, the healthcare space witnessed a veritable invasion of new solutions ranging from robots to tablets to managed professional services. Let's peruse the news from the healthcare sphere with a focus on improvements in robotics.
If trends continue, then you're going to see more robots during your hospital stays. For example, clinicians can use the Xenex robot can flood a room with ultraviolet light, killing germs and preventing hospital associated infections. These infections kill 99,000 patients per year, and the advantage of disinfecting rooms thanks to robots could prevent deaths without the use of harsh disinfectants.
Certain robots can even help in the surgical ward. Robots from the RP VITA line allow surgeons to operate on a patient via telepresence. The da Vinci surgical robot has experienced some controversy lately, but it has the dexterity to peel the skin off of a grape without damaging the fruit. Robotic prosthetics, like the iWalk BiOM system, enable amputees to regain mobility, while cute, lifelike robots like Paro help patients with dementia to enjoy happy connections with the outside world.
Robots may even assist children with cancer. In a Lisbon, Portugal, pediatric cancer ward, scientists from the MOnarCH robot project plan to deploy social robots. These robots can interact and play with kids as well as provide information to medical professionals.
MOnarCH is working to accomplish more than just helping kids. The organization is using the experiment to find out how humans and robots interact in the workplace. As the robots' interactive capabilities become more sophisticated, MOnarCH hopes to use the information to develop rules that they can program into robots to help them function in a larger society. In addition, they will use information from their experiment to develop ethics that can help govern a human/robot society.
If all of these ideas are triggering thoughts of Cylons and Skynet, then remember how helpful robots can be in the clinical setting. In rural areas, where patients can't access surgeons but are too sick to travel, robotic surgery via telepresence can save many lives. So don't write off your artificial neighbors just yet. The life that they save may be your own.
That's a recap of news from Health TechZone this week. Thank you for joining us, and check back every weekday for the latest and greatest technological advances in the healthcare industry.
