What Is Medical Robotics and How Does It Serve Medicine?
It goes without saying that technology and its advancements are making our lives easier and better in many different ways. From the way we entertain ourselves, like watching the latest movies within a few clicks on streaming platforms to the way we eat, travel, and shop, every aspect of our lives has been influenced by some sort of modern technology. Even when it comes to our health and medicine in general, we can see that there are great changes in the way that surgeries and treatments are performed.
When we talk about medical robotics, we usually think about human-like machines that tend to wounds. Even though these images are mostly inspired by scenes that we’ve seen in science fiction movies, medical robots do exist and they are slowly being incorporated into healthcare institutions worldwide.
The need for medical robots has become evident, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, their presence in the future is inevitable. Since they can assist and support the medical service that most health workers are offering. Medical robots aren’t yet capable of replacing humans in terms of creative thinking or giving a proper emotional response, they can now completely replace workers that are doing repetitive functions.
Here are some ways in which medical robots improve the healthcare system.
They Help With Hospital Acquired Infections
HAIs or hospital-acquired infections are infections that happen as a result of hospital care. It is said that 1 in 31 patients have HAIs since they are easily transmittable. One can get infected after being admitted, or simply by visiting the hospital. And now, with the assistance of UV medical robots, the numbers of people infected with HAI have dropped significantly. One such example is a medical robot used for disinfection called Violet. It takes 15 minutes for Violet to complete a work that a human health worker does in 60 minutes.
They Can Exchange Hospital Receptionist
There isn’t a more monotonous and tedious job than being a receptionist. And most of the time people need to face the bad temper of these workers whenever they are visiting the hospital. And that’s the last thing they need, especially when they are feeling under the weather. But now hospitals around the world can “hire” Pepper. This 1,2-meter tall humanoid is already put to work by hospitals in the Czech Republic and Belgium. The robot is equally kind towards anyone who has a question or needs instruction. Pepper speaks over 20 languages and it can recognize if it’s talking to a child, woman, or man. Pepper also proved to be very helpful around hospitals during the pandemic since it reminded visitors about precautions that they need to take to prevent the virus from spreading.
They Can Be Helpful For Heavy Lifting
Since nurses need to move the patients to another bed (and this happens ever so often) robots like Robear can be useful in the future. It can move patients in or out of bed or even place them in a wheelchair.