Open Source Robotics with the Raven

I love the term open source; most think of Linux, MySQL, php or other computer science related ideas. Raven is actually an open source platform for software programming a robotic system developed by the University of Washington and UC Santa Cruz.
What does this mean? Well, one example would be doing surgery on a beating heart, but the instruments and camera would move in concert with the heart beat, making the surgeon less distracted during surgery. Maybe it would also bring more innovation to surgery, taking it out of the monopoly situation we are in right now.

Stanford researchers build transparent, super-stretchy skin-like sensor

via news.stanford.edu

This kind of skin could be placed on robots-- Imagine placing this on a robotic instrument with a way to pass on the force sensation to the human controlling the motion. Or perhaps creating a emergency stop when parts of the robotic instrument start running into resistance... This technology was created not only at my alma mater, but also by my old chemE department!

High-end medical option prompts Medicare worries - Yahoo! News

via news.yahoo.com

Urologists cover many elements of men's health. While there is no "concierge urology" yet, there are some urologists who do not accept government insurance and have patients file their own private insurance claims. Patients coming from South America or Mexico for prostate cancer surgery find San Antonio a comfortable and friendly place to recuperate after surgery. Mexico has a handful of robots for prostate surgery. What is lacking is experience. Dr Kella and Urology San Antonio have the most experience in Texas with over 2000 prostate cancer cases performed. They also have been handling the unique needs of our international patients.

Is the robot just a powertool?

Over the past year, I have been amazed at how fast robotic surgery is becoming the standard for patients who need surgery for their prostate cancer. Even surgeons who don't perform robotics have decided to refer patients to me as a service to their patients. Initially, I thought that the learning curve for robotics would be too steep for busy surgeons to fully master. That's why I took a year to do a fellowship and travel to see expert surgeons perform cases. Now that I have done hundreds of cases and travel to "proctor" new robotic surgeons as they do cases, my original opinion has changed a bit.

If a surgeon is dedicated enough, there are finally enough good surgical videos and trained proctors available to considerably shorten the learning curve. How many cases? I'm not sure, but I still would not want to be one of the initial 25 patients or so. The robot is just a fancy powertool. If you know how to use it, you can do great things. Otherwise you could risk a lot of damage to the patient and to yourself. A useful website by Intuitive Surgical lists surgeons who have done at least 20 cases. Now that I have been doing this for a while, I can tell you that is a ridiculously low number and the literature supports a much higher number.  I suggest that you should look for surgeons who have done at least a thousand cases!