Da Vinci Surgical System
So what is the Da Vinci Surgical System? Well it is what Intuitive (the company who sells the system) suggests is the alternative approach to manual surgery. The surgical system is composed of a surgeon console, a vision cart, and advanced robotic arms with their own surgical instruments that assist in what's called minimally invasive surgery. Minimally invasive surgery is when a surgeon uses a smaller incision to perform a surgical procedure. The surgical system operates by translating the movements of an active surgeon at the terminal of the machine and this is done by using tiny wristed devices that a surgeon uses to move like a human hand so that when you move them, those motions get sent to the terminal and the system proceeds to carry out the function. The Da Vinci Surgical System was the first ever robotic surgery system approved for laparoscopic surgery in 2000 (laparoscopic surgery is a diagnostic procedure used to analyze organs inside the abdomen). While it may be one heck of an intuitive surgical system, the Da Vinci Surgical System is priced at a whopping 2 million USD (2,517,790 million CAD). Also it's important to note that there are other variants of the surgical system like the SI, X, XI, and the SP1 however, I just gave a basic rundown on the default version. As of now, there are Da Vinci robots in St. Michael's, Toronto General Hospital, Sunnybrook/Toronto East general Hospital, and Humber.
“As laparoscopic surgery has continued to succeed, I don’t think there’s a person on the planet who would have an open operation. And that’s only over 20 years or so, so that’s a rapid shift,” -Dr. Jay Redan |
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Robotic Medical Assistant
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In the medical field, an efficient new concept is emerging and that is the practice of using medical assistant robots! Okay, but that raises the question, what exactly is a medical assistant robot and what do they even do? Well there are many different types of robotic medical assistants but I'll briefly go over them. One kind of robotic medical assistant is a robot that simply relieves medical personnel of tedious and routine tasks so that the worker can focus their attention on more pressing matters, compared to smaller, easier, and more mundane responsibilities that come up. So this can be something simple like keeping the patient company, helping them up in case of spinal issues, etc. Another type of robotic medical assistant are ones that carry substances around the hospital. Some of the substances can consist of something toxic for humans, precious medicine, etc and not only that, but these robots deliver their parcel in a cinch. Also, there are certain medical robots that monitor the vitality of the patient. Some jobs that these types of medical robots do is show statistics of the vitality of the patient, respond if anything unwanted is happening, alert if a human needs to be in the room, etc. Of course there are a lot of other unique robots but those seem to be the most popular and the ones that are currently in use.
“An ongoing daily effort to incorporate high-tech robotics into our activities will be the best way to realize life in our future society.” -Professor Ryosuke Tasaki |
Sanitization Robot
As of now, the pandemic has really gotten out of hand, with COVID-19 being a major concern to hospitals and specifically the elderly, infants, patients with immune disorders, and healthcare workers, so due to that, one of the top priorities of the facility is to keep everything proficiently sanitized. However, if a non-infected human were to attempt to sanitize a room before medical personnel can use it, that could potentially spread COVID-19 due to exposure. Though, this all changes when it comes to robots as they can't actually reproduce the virus because they don't have organic cellular components. Furthermore, this begs the question, liquid sanitizer has the potential to damage electronics in the room and the robot itself so how does it even clean the room, not only that but how does it kill micro-organisms and specifically viruses? The answer is UV (ultra violet) light! You see, the sanitization robots use UV light to literally radiate the outer protein coating off which ends up destroying the entire virion (virion meaning a singular virus particle). For example, I'll be referring to the UVD robot from here on out, and if you're wondering, these are distributed and sold by a Danish company named UVD Robots. These sanitization robots were in development for 4 years and they started selling in 2018. The robot is made up of 3 main components, the mobile body, lidar sensors, and of course the UV lamps. The robots typically take around 10-15 minutes to disinfect a regular room by spending 1-2 minutes in a certain spot in the room. Also, seeing as I mentioned the price earlier for the Da Vinci Surgical System, I also find it fitting to name this robot's price and the answer may dumbfound you! Surprisingly, they only cost about 80-90 thousand USD (100,741.60-113,334.30 CAD) which is relatively cheap when looking at medical instruments!
“That’s why there’s a big need for our robots all over the world now, because they can be used in fighting coronavirus, and for fighting all of the other infections that are still there.” -UVD Robots CEO Per Juul Nielsen |
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What Will Robotics in the Medical Field Potentially Look Like in the Upcoming Future?
Nanotechnology in the Medical Field
We may have seen the word being tossed around in pop culture but nano-tech is something that in the near future, could contribute to magnificent feats that the modern day world considers the impossible. It could literally make the impossible possible! There are tons of applications for nanotechnology in the medical field and here are some of what I think can potentially be the most transformative uses for this subject of expertise. First is the ability to detect changes (good or bad) on the cellular scale and to detect when there may be a threat to an individual's health. Using nanotechnology, in the near future may be able to do check ups in less time and more thoroughly and this could be helpful when trying to detect virus, cancer cells, and any other anomalies. Building off of my first point, the second use for nanotechnology could in fact be to deliver drugs, heat, light, or other types of substances to particular type of cell. The nano-bots would be attracted to diseased cells and that allows for the nano-bots to give direct treatment to those cells, without the worry of damaging healthy cells in the process. Actually, these last two points have already been in testing as researchers at North Carolina State University are currently trying to develop a method to deliver cardiac stem cells to damage heart tissue. The third use for nanotechnology in the medical field is making a sort of synthetic platelets. Researchers from Chase Western Reserve University are currently experimenting and developing nanoparticles an actually, their lab tests have already shown that the injection of these synthetic platelets not only heal wound faster, but also reduce blood loss in the test subject. Of course there are tons of incredible uses for nanotechnology in the medical field but I chose what I though were some of the most crucial and life changing uses I could find.
"Nanotechnology in medicine is going to have a major impact on the survival of the human race." -Bernard Marcus
"Nanotechnology in medicine is going to have a major impact on the survival of the human race." -Bernard Marcus
Bibliography
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www.roboticoncology.com/history-of-robotic-surgery/#:~:text=In%201990%20the%20AESOP%20system,FDA%20for%20general%20laparoscopic%20surgery
-David B. Samadi M.D.
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-Anonymous
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www.healthline.com/health-news/is-da-vinci-robotic-surgery-revolution-or-ripoff-021215
-Scott Cameron
(Note: Remove the "%E2%80%8B" at the end of the URL and it should take you to the proper article if it didn't already.)
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-Rose Jimmy
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-Anonymous
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-Anonymous
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-Anonymous
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-Anonymous