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ROBOTS AND AI WILL TAKE OVER THESE 3 MEDICAL NICHES FIRST

  • Writer: amalabdreamz
    amalabdreamz
  • Oct 18, 2018
  • 2 min read

Introduction

We are not oblivious to robotics in the medical field. Assisted robotic surgery is becoming more common. Many training programs are beginning to include a virtual reality and robotics to provide hands-on training to students without putting patients at risk.


With all these advances in medical robotics, three niches are above the rest: surgery, medical imaging and drug discovery. How have roboticists already begun to exert their influence on these practices and how to change forever?


Robot-Assisted Surgery

Assisted robotic surgery was first documented in 1985, when it was used for a neurosurgical biopsy. This has been the use of robotics in a series of similar surgeries, both in laparoscopic and traditional operations. The FDA has not published the robotic surgery tools until the year 2000, when the da Vinci Surgery system reached the market.



It is expected that in the robot-assisted surgery market grow steadily until 2023 and potentially beyond. The only thing that can prevent this growth is the cost of the equipment. The initial investment can prevent small practices from understanding the necessary devices.


Medical Imaging

The key to a successful medical image is not the equipment itself. It is to be able to interpret the information in the images. Medical images are some of the data with the highest density of information in the field of medicine.


Robotics and, more specifically, artificial intelligence programs such as IBM Watson can help interpret these images more efficiently and accurately. By allowing a machine learning or basic artificial intelligence program to study medical images, those who can find patterns and make more accurate diagnoses than ever before.


Drug Discovery

Drug discovery is a long and tedious process that includes years of testing and evaluation. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive algorithms could help accelerate this system.


Imagine if you have a good idea. With robotics, that may be possible someday.

This is not a perfect solution yet, these systems require large amounts of data before they can begin making decisions or predictions. When entering the data in the cloud from where these programs can access the first steps to configure a functional database.


Another benefit of these artificial intelligence programs is that they can see connections that humans have never thought of. People can take those jumps, but the possibilities are much smaller. In short, we can not process the large amount of data that computers can process.


This is not a field in which we care about robots that steal jobs.

Quite the opposite, in fact, we want robots to become commonly used tools that can help improve patient care and surgical outcomes.

A human surgeon may have intuition, but he will never have the stability that a pair of robotic hands. If we leave them, these tools will change the way we see medicine.


 
 
 

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