Robots. What started as a mere concept has advanced into so many different fields. We went from conceptualizing robots to seeing them everywhere in the span of just a couple of decades. The cultural uprising of robots is one that is constantly changing. Society is much more developed in terms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) than what it was imagined to be five years ago. What are these brilliant robots being used for? And what does it mean for the future of society?

Robots have been popping up in various industries. In the cleaning industry, robots can navigate your house and clean every corner. In dining, robots can prepare, cook, and serve your food. In retail, stores have started implementing robots that can bring the item you’re looking for, to you. These are all examples that are becoming exceedingly common today. There is one field, however, that is utilizing robots in a way that most people don’t know about: medicine. The idea sounds scary at first. People go to the doctor for advice or help. Each patient trusts their doctor with their life, so the thought of robots meddling in this relationship makes many uncomfortable. This along with the fact that robots could be taking over the jobs of doctors and surgeons that went to school for eight to ten years is not an easy pill to swallow. 

The start of the usage of robots in medicine (medicinal robots) was about 34 years ago. It started when a robot and a navigational tomography probe were inserted into a brain to collect a biopsy specimen. The whole idea that a robot did this without assistance or being controlled by a person caused great uproar. Since then, robots in medicine have been geared and engineered to be helpers to surgeons and doctors.

Their functions can be as simple as conducting procedures, such as hip replacements, to something as big as making a life-changing decision, mid-surgery.  Some cardiologists that have completed their fellowship in specific robots work alongside these machines to perform open heart surgery on patients. As far as surgery goes, there are no specific downsides to surgery with robots. “Patient benefits from robot-assisted surgery are largely those associated with the laparoscopic approach — smaller incisions, reduced blood loss, and faster recovery” (Gyles). Prosthetic limbs and joints have an autonomous element that can connect to your neural network to help movement. Robotic nurses and janitors can help keep the hospital environment neat and disinfected without need from human volunteers. 

In 20 years, who knows, they may be performing open heart surgeries all by themselves, without a human surgeon counterpart. As sensitive as healthcare is, advances and the betterment of human life has always been the first priority of the human race. If having robots in a surgery room increases survival chances by even a little, humans may well be willing to take that risk. The introduction of AI and robotics into the field of medicine may bring greater change to our society’s function than we can imagine. I guess only the future can tell how far these robots will go . 

Works Cited

Davis, Laura . “StackPath.” Www.newequipment.com, 15 Jan. 2019, www.newequipment.com/industry-trends/media-gallery/22060446/meet-moxi-healthcares-ai-robot.

Gyles, Carlton. “Robots in Medicine.” The Canadian Veterinary Journal = La Revue Vétérinaire Canadienne, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Aug. 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6625162/. 

Hospital, Stanford. “Robots Join Workforce at the New Stanford Hospital.” News Center, 4 Nov. 2019, med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/11/robots-join-the-workforce-at-the-new-stanford-hospital-.html.

“Robotic Cardiac Surgery.” Robotic Cardiac Surgery | Johns Hopkins Medicine, 19 Nov. 2019, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/robotic-cardiac-surgery.