Imagine this? robotic scrub nurses that intuitively
acknowledges hand gestures? They may not exist today, but we can?t say that
they are mere fiction only. Someday,
surgeons might use gestures to manipulate a robotic scrub nurse or command a
computer to show medical images of the patient during surgical procedure.
It?s an idea resonant of the Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report,
remarks Juan Pablo Wachs, PhD, assistant professor of industrial engineering at
Purdue University and one of the minds behind
the conception.
Recognition of hand-gesture and other robotic nurse innovations might be the
answer to reducing the length of a surgery and the prospects for infection,
according to Wachs. Also, recognition
through vision-based hand-gesture technology could have other uses, including in
assisting on emergency response activities in the midst of disasters.
Wach implies that a robotic scrub nurse acts as a promising new tool that
might enhance operating-room proficiency; he and his colleagues wrote regarding
this in the February issue of Communications of the ACM, the Association
for Computing Machinery?s publication.
Wachs explains that the challenge here will be the development of the proper
shapes of hand poses and the necessary hand trajectory movements to mirror and
express particular medical functions. "You want to use intuitive and
natural gestures for the surgeon, to express medical image navigation
activities, but you also need to consider cultural and physical differences
between surgeons," he added. Each may have his or her favored gesture.
Additional challenges include supporting computers with the capability to
assimilate the framework in which gestures are made and to recognize and
understand intended against unintended ones.
According to Wachs these are necessary to prevent the robot from handing the
surgeon a hemostat when the surgeon strikes a conversation with another person
in the operating room and executes "conversational gestures."
Is there a possibility to replace scrub nurses with robots? ?Maybe? was
Wachs? answer. He admits that it would be an exacting task for a robot to
replace a nurse who has broad experience with a particular surgeon. On the
other hand many scrub nurses have only minimal experience with a given surgeon,
which enhances the probability of confusions, delays, and mistakes. In those
circumstances, he says, "a robotic scrub nurse could be better."
Wachs has already created a prototype, and he breaks the news to
HealthLeaders Media that he anticipates to have a fully operational unit for
the OR in four to five years.
According to Wachs the concept of robotic scrub nurses isn?t new, however
most research has concentrated on voice recognition; minimal work has been done
in gesture recognition.
"Another big difference between our focus and the others' is that we
are also working on prediction, to anticipate what images the surgeon will need
to see next and what instruments will be needed," Wachs says.
The question is, what types of surgery will be most suitable for this
technology?
Wachs specifies, currently, robotics have been utilized initially for
endoscopic and laparoscopic surgeries, as has the Da Vinci. He tells
HealthLeaders Media that the predominant objective of their system is to be
used in open surgeries, such as trauma surgeries, which have not used robots in
any way.
"In general, I believe that there is no limit to the extent that robots
can be used in the OR. Are they going to replace surgeons? Most likely they are
going to complement them," Wachs
said.