Robots are slowly taking up space in operating rooms by assisting in surgical procedures and performing repetitive tasks.

We have witnessed a boom in artificial intelligence and its use cases across various industries. Healthcare is one of the important benefactors of AI, automation, and robotics. AI  is already prevalent in drug development, diagnostics, medical imaging, etc., and it has had great impacts on the healthcare industry.

Robots have also started taking baby steps by providing assistance to patients, personalizing treatments, and also providing assistance in surgical procedures. Yes, you read it right. Robots are slowly entering the operating rooms. Will you let a robot perform medical procedures on you? Maybe you won't but there is a long way to go for robots to replace human doctors in operating rooms. Many fictions and movies have shown robots taking over the human race. Well, they remain in fiction since robots are never going to replace humans unless they completely replicate human intelligence, which is a far fetched thought.

Robots Aiding Surgical Procedures

The DaVinci surgical system created by Intuitive Surgicals in the year 2000 is a robotic surgical system that facilitates procedures like prostatectomy and heart valve repair. This surgical system is minimally invasive and can be controlled through a console. There are tiny robotic arms that assist in surgery and act as scalpels and 3D camera vision for better visibility. This is just one example of robot-aided surgical operations and there are more.

Robots in the operating room can increase efficiency by better precision and reduced risk factors. They can assist doctors with faster, accurate arms and help in post-operative recovery. Human hands might have tremors while performing surgeries, which can be fatal. With robots, there is no such disadvantage, and they reduce human errors in operating procedures.

A Guardian report from 2018 that covered a surgical robot Vercius has an interesting lead which goes, "Trainee surgeons typically require 60 to 80 hours of practice, but in a mock-up operating theatre outside Cambridge, a non-medic with just a few hours of experience is expertly wielding a hook-shaped needle – in this case stitching a square of pink sponge rather than an artery or appendix. The feat is performed with the assistance of Vercius, the world's smallest surgical robot, which could be used in NHS operating theatres for the first time later this year if approved for clinical use."

The medical robot company CUREXO, has developed surgical robots that can assist in joint surgeries. The system pre-plans the surgery by developing a 3D image of the affected area and provides guidelines through virtual surgery and assists in precise cutting. Well, it is not a nascent initiative since the company's surgical robots performed its first robotic hip joint relocation back in 1992.

Another area that equips robots is surgical sutures, is in laparoscopic surgeries where the field of vision is limited for the surgeon. Robots have a better degree of freedom which enables them to move without constraints. A research team from John Hopkins University and Washington based Children's National Health System published research in 2016 regarding the suturing abilities of surgical robots. The research developed a system called Smart Tissue Automation Robot (STAR) that can perform soft tissue suturing. According to a report in IEEE Spectrum, in 2016 the STAR system sewed together two segments of the pig intestine with stitches that were more regular and leak-resistant compared to experienced surgeons.

A Wall Street Journal report mentions another milestone in the robotic surgery systems. The report says that Researchers from the National University of Singapore and Intel Corp. are trying to mimic the sense of touch with a robotic silicon finger. Sense of touch is important in surgical procedures to identify organs and with the robots being able to handle this, doctors can perform remote surgeries. These silicon fingers will operate with the help of AI and sensors.

What Does the Future Look Like?

Robots can effectively assist surgical procedures with maximum accuracy and minimum errors. The arrival of more efficient technologies like 5G will enable these robots to function more impactfully and will gradually lessen human intervention. As mentioned in the above section, more innovations are coming our way which will enable remote surgeries with the help of robots.

Although there are abundant advantages, AI and robots have many ethical concerns that need to be addressed in order to gain a wider range of acceptance.