Recently, news about robots has been flooding in, and movies featuring them are constantly emerging. Do you remember Baymax? That warm-hearted robot who can also test your health? This concept is no longer just a movie fantasy. According to the “2016-2020 China Medical Robot Industry Deep Research and Investment Prospect Forecast Report,” medical robots have slowly begun to enter our lives!
Let’s take a look inside a medical robot worth 1.8 million dollars.
So what are the latest powerful technical supports for medical robots?
1. Optimization Design Technology
Since medical robots are called robots, they cannot be separated from the fundamental theories and key technologies of robotics, including mechanisms, control, sensing, human-machine interaction, remote operation, and materials, etc. This aspect is not much different from traditional robots. The design must break free from the “shadow” of traditional industrial robots, achieving lightweight, precision, and innovative design of flexible robot structures.
2. System Integration Technology
Medical robots have a special connotation of “medical,” which requires safety and effectiveness. During system integration, it is essential to focus on the specific surgical process requirements, considering how the operating room will apply it, and paying attention to the study of human-machine ergonomics. If doctors do not accept your system, no matter how well your theoretical work is done or how advanced your technology is, it will not be promoted and applied. Therefore, medical robots emphasize the integration of “doctor-robot-patient.”
3. Remote Surgery Technology
Currently, most successful surgical robots are master-slave robotic systems, and the future trend is remote surgery. Therefore, remote control operation and remote surgery technology are also highly valued.
4. Surgical Navigation Technology
Based on robotic systems for 3D surgical planning, utilizing real-time reconstruction and fusion processing of medical images, and high-precision 3D tracking positioning and visualization technology of surgical robots, achieving real-time calibration and registration during surgery.
5. Soft Robot Technology
Soft robot technology is a relatively popular technology now, and its prospects in the medical field are also very promising. For example, ureteroscope robots have a very bright future in urology.
6. Assisted Interventional Therapy Technology
Since the 1990s, interventional therapy has rapidly developed. This technology involves guiding specialized catheters, guidewires, and other precision instruments into the body under medical imaging such as CT, MRI, US, and X-ray, for diagnosis and local treatment of pathological conditions. This technology has opened up new effective treatment avenues for many conditions previously considered untreatable or difficult to treat in clinical practice. Interventional therapy doctors place catheters or other instruments into almost all vascular branches and other tubular structures such as the digestive tract, bile duct, trachea, nasal cavity, and specific sites to implement localized treatment. This technology is particularly suitable for patients who have lost surgical opportunities or are unsuitable for surgery due to liver, lung, stomach, kidney, pelvic, bone, and soft tissue malignant tumors.
Interventional therapy features non-invasive, minimally traumatic, quick recovery, good efficacy, and low cost. Some scholars even list interventional therapy alongside internal medicine and surgery as the three major therapeutic techniques.
Currently, there are certain issues with interventional therapy methods. For example, most interventional therapies are completed in traditional two-dimensional images, which leads to insufficient accuracy in locating the target lesions, affecting the effectiveness of interventional therapy. Doctors are exposed to radiation from X-rays, CT scans, etc., which poses a health risk to doctors. Due to the lack of positioning for surgical instruments, doctors often cannot accurately place surgical instruments at the target lesion in one go and need to gradually place them under imaging guidance, reducing the efficiency of surgery. The limitations of hand movements and the prolonged need for precise handling of surgical tools can cause significant fatigue for doctors, and factors such as fatigue and instability in manual operations can affect the quality of surgery. Additionally, interventional therapy requires high skill levels, and only experienced doctors can perform it, which limits the widespread application of this technology.
The key to interventional therapy is accurately placing precision surgical instruments into the target lesions to achieve therapeutic goals, which requires solving problems such as scientific design before treatment, accurate positioning during treatment, stable puncture, and instrument support. Robotic-assisted systems are an important means to solve the aforementioned traditional interventional therapy issues. Robotic-assisted systems use computer technology to analyze medical imaging information, applying medical robots to achieve precise positioning and assistive operation based on constructing three-dimensional spatial coordinates. This combines the advantages of interventional technology with accurate robot positioning, stable state, strong flexibility, large working range, and standardized operation processes, reducing human factors during treatment, making interventional therapy more precise, flexible, and safe, overcoming the dependence on the experience of doctors.
7. Medical and Internet Big Data
With the emergence of new technologies, medical robots also need to keep pace with the times, including digital healthcare, mobile healthcare, wearable healthcare, and telemedicine. This trend is becoming increasingly evident. Japan’s Pepper robot, by utilizing cloud computing and big data, can effectively intervene in emotional companionship, which is also a development trend for the future. (Source: China Electric Network)
