She “works on surgical robots and robotic surgical procedures, using robots to make surgery safer — and to go places where human wrists and eyes simply can’t.”

She’s talking about surgical robots and surgical vision technology. Surgeons are tailors, plumbers, butchers of medical industry.

History of surgery. How did we even come to believe that surgery — cutting and reforming — was OK? Shows picture of ancient trepanated (hole drilled in) skull. Goes back 5k to 10k years. This is the dawn of interventional surgery. How much was intended to be religious or therapeutic? we know that these patients lived for many years after being trepanned.

The itinerant barber surgeon – before age of anesthesia. Patient in pain was a public spectacle. Barber surgeon was almost a form of entertainment. Surgery was done on public in front of big crowd.

1847 — anesthesia. It gave surgeons freedom to operate, to delve deeper into body. A revolution in surgery. But problem: after surgery, the patients died, of massive infection. Surgery didn’t hurt but it killed you.

Aseptic technique. Joseph Lister was thought to be a fool for believing that it was as important for surgeons to wash hands before surgery as after. After a while, the medical community warmed to the idea.

Healthy people don’t need surgery, unhealthy people need surgery, but since they are unhealthy, it’s harder for them to recover.

Laparoscopy — small incisions. A lot easier on the body. Much easier to heal. But laparoscopy is hard to learn. Surgeons had to give up 3D vision, wrists, etc. External ergonomics are terrible. Instruments are working backwards. You need to take capability of your hand and put it at the business end of instrument.

Robotic surgery tool — the DaVinci — has “wrists” and 3D vision that greatly improve dexterity. She’s showing amazing videos of heart and prostrate surgery. Tiny pincers at work.

Limitations — if you need to reach more places that just one, you need to move robot and open new holes in patient. Becomes time-consuming. To solve this we need to bring camera and instruments through one small tube. She’s showing a new surgery tool — it looks like an HR Giger tentacle with mini tentacles that blossom open from the main trunk. Can inject dyes into cells and the light can make cancerous cells visible.

Via BoingBoing

The Robot, named after Jericho’s initials – “J.R. Railroad” was designed to resemble the storybook “Little Engine That Could.” The robot will deliver medication to children being treated for cancer.

“When I was little, I had leukemia. It was horrible,” Jericho wrote in his wish to the Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation. “I wished there could be a robot that could bring kids medicine in the hospital so they would smile, instead of a nurse coming in with a tray.”

We helped Make-A-Wish with a little networking with this project, and found that the TUG by Aethon with a little modification would be the perfect candidate for this, because the TUG is already designed to shuttle around meds, food and equipment. Make-A-Wish contacted Aethon and not only did Aethon agree that the TUG would be the best for the job, but also donated the $105,000 robot:

The train built around the industrial looking robot was designed by San-Francisco based Gensler Architects. Oh yeah, and the conductor in the robot outfitted by The Gap, it does have a voice, not only a voice, but The Voice, Don LaFontaine.

According to his physician, Dr. Michelle Hermiston of Corte Madera, currently, Jericho is in remission and doing well.

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We have all heard of the artificial heart, but have you heard of all these other artificial parts being worked on? Science Ahead has a great article about all the new technology in this field. Matrix, here we come.

• Artificial Wombs
• Artificial gut
• Artificial Heart
• Artificial blood
• Artificial blood vessels
• Artificial bones
• Artificial Skin
• Artificial Retina
• Artificial limbs
• Artificial body parts from Stem cells

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Science Daily — Some 40 years after the release of the classic science fiction movie Fantastic Voyage, researchers in the NanoRobotics Laboratory of École Polytechnique de Montréal’s Department of Computer Engineering and Institute of Biomedical Engineering have achieved a major technological breakthrough in the field of medical robotics. They have succeeded for the first time in guiding, in vivo and via computer control, a microdevice inside an artery, at a speed of 10 centimetres a second.

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Perhaps one of the most innovative developments is the introduction of the da Vinci robotic surgery system which enables a skilled surgeon to operate in a minimally invasive manner. Simply put, minimally invasive means that the less traumatic the incision required to complete the surgery, the better the outcome will be for the patient. The patient is subjected to a much shorter hospital stay, less postoperative pain is experienced, bleeding is minimized, scarring is reduced and much quicker healing is fostered. This translates into significant benefits for the patient and enables a much quicker return to the normal activities of life.

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via Digg Post 

Thought-controlled robotic limbs were only the beginning.

hand.jpgScientists have had a string of remarkable successes lately, taking signals from the brains of monkeys and men, and using them to move mechanical arms.

Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a “neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb.”

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