What Are Medical Robots?
In simple terms, medical robots refer to robots that are utilized in the medical field. These robots provide trained medical assistance both inside as well as outside a hospital. The introduction of this technological spectacle in medicine has resulted in the across-the-board improvement of patient care. These robots have begun to be widely used in almost the entire medical sector, and it has been seen that they are very beneficial for conducting a broad range of procedures.
The following are some major advantages of using these robots.
- They make the workload of medical staff less and easy by alleviating them from routine checkups, hence permitting them to use more time attending to the patients and other important tasks.
- They bring about prominent functioning efficiencies and reduce healthcare expenditure and medical establishments such as hospitals, clinics, and medical colleges.
- They are capable of making the medical operations much cautious and less expensive for the patients.
- While performing surgeries, they can assess minute and sensitive places and operate precisely.
- These robots benefit the patients by executing the medical procedures in such a way that the post-operative irritation and discomfort would be less, resulting in a quicker recovery period.
Despite the many purposes of medical robots, like most mechanical inventions, they do have some setbacks.
- The initial cost for installing these robots is quite high, especially for a robotic operating system, which will increase the expense of the surgery.
- The biggest problem encountered in robotic surgery is latency complications, as it would take some time for parts of the robot to move and carry out its commands. For difficulties that arise amidst a medical operation, such latency issues make it hard for the doctors to react accurately and effectively.
- Another risk factor in using these robots is the probability of mechanical malfunctioning of system units like robotic arms, camera and other attachments, which occurs very rarely in less than 1% of the medical cases.
- The usage of robots in surgery may result in nerve palsies as in such operations, and direct nerve compression may occur or when the body is positioned in a severe manner required for robot-assisted surgery.
New and modified versions of such medical robots have been researched and developed every year by skilled robot experts all over the world. Chulalongkorn University has also recently contributed to medicine by giving out the latest telemedicine robots, developed by Dr Viboon Sangveraphunsiri, a lecturer at the Department of Mechanical Engineering Chulalongkorn University and the Head of the Regional Centre of Robotic Technology. These inventive robots are to be used for better communication between the COVID-19 patients, doctors, and nurses. They also facilitate providing help for bedridden elderly patients.
Without any doubt, these devices are a boon to the medical community.
