Robotic Surgery

See the following -

Health Care's Juicero Problem

Bad news: if you were still hoping to get one of the $400 juicers from Juicero, you may be out of luck.  Juicero announced that they were suspending sales while they seek an acquirer.  They'd already dropped the juicer's price from its initial $700 earlier this year and had hoped to find ways to drop it further, but ran out of time. I keep thinking: if they'd been a health care company, they not only might still be in business but also would probably be looking to raise their prices. Juicero once was the darling of investors. It raised $120 million from a variety of respected funding sources, including Kleiner Perkins, Alphabet and Campbell Soup. They weren't a juice company, or even an appliance company. They were a technology company! They had an Internet-of-Things product! They had an ongoing base of customers...

Hospitals Often Don't Report Robotic Surgery Adverse Events

Ashley Gold | FierceHealth IT | January 2, 2014

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration oversees a database that reports deaths and injuries associated with medical devices, the agency has no authority to force medical providers to contribute to the database. To that end, many hospitals fail to report adverse events associated with robotic surgery procedures, according to a recent Bloomberg investigation. Read More »

Open Source Robotic Surgery System In The Works

Susan D. Hall | FierceHealthIT | February 11, 2014

While the Da Vinci surgical system is the only robot with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval--and the target of plenty of criticism--researchers are looking to develop surgical robots based on open source technology, reports Scientific American. Read More »

Robotic Help

Evan Tuchinsky | Chico News & Review | April 11, 2013

Ten years ago, during his surgical fellowship, Dr. Ravi Nagubandi got a glimpse of his future when he observed an early version of robot-assisted surgery... Read More »

Robotic Surgery Opens Up

Larry Greenemeier | Scientific American | February 11, 2014

If the open-source approach to building robot surgeons can cut costs and improve performance, patients will increasingly find them at the other end of the scalpel Read More »

Robots in Healthcare - Will they do the Heavy Lifting?

There are already robots in health care.  Robotic surgery, delivery robots, robotic prescription dispensing systems, even therapeutic robots used in lieu of pet therapy  But we've just scratched the surface, because we still think of care as being something that is delivered by a person. People like to talk about the importance of the human touch, but when it comes to something like getting out of bed when I want to, I think I'd rather have immediate service from a robot than an indeterminate wait for help from an aide.  And there are some more unpleasant tasks -- like assistance with going to the bathroom -- where I'd prefer not to have to ask another person to help me at all.  Sometimes impersonal is better (just be gentle, please).

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So...Is Paying Ransom What Bitcoin Is For?

The tech, law enforcement, and privacy worlds are abuzz with the recent decision by Apple to refuse to help the FBI crack the security on an iPhone, even though the iPhone in question belonged to an alleged terrorist/mass murderer.  As fascinating and important as that story is, I was even more interested in another cybersecurity story, about a hospital paying ransom to hackers in order to regain access to its own computer systems. This was not the first such occurrence, and it won't be the last.

Unreported Robot Surgery Injuries Open Questions For FDA

Robert Langreth | Bloomberg Personal Finance | December 30, 2013

When Sheena Wilson, 45, underwent robotic surgery for a hysterectomy in May, she didn’t know the Intuitive Surgical Inc. system used by her doctor was previously tied to a variety of injuries for the same procedure. Read More »

When code can kill or cure

Staff | The Economist | June 2, 2012

Applying the “open source” model to the design of medical devices promises to increase safety and spur innovation. However, when software in a medical device malfunctions, the consequences can be far more serious than just having to reboot your PC. Read More »