Why The World is Ready for Robotic Surgery
Humans have regarded artificial intelligence and robots with awed fascination ever since they were first conceptualized. The idea of helpful, friendly robots gaining advanced capabilities and autonomy, and helping us perform many of our routine daily tasks, was initially nothing but Hollywood fiction. Yet over the past 3 decades those possibilities – from robots doing our laundry to performing advanced surgeries – keep inching closer to reality. Whenever an exciting breakthrough happens with robotics – whether it be the development of our own Vicarious Surgical robot or other robotics in other industries – the question always comes up: how will humans adjust and adapt to robots being a greater part of their lives and carrying out important tasks once only done by humans? While a few decades ago many people may have viewed robots with concern, I believe today most people view the advancement of robots with excitement, enthusiasm, and even wonder. This is especially true when they understand the potential of a robot to do something incredibly useful like performing an abdominal surgery with improved outcomes through reduced post-surgical complications.
Most people have adapted to, and are comfortable with, increasing parts of their daily lives being automated. Dishwashers, clothes washers/dryers, thermostats, sprinklers, grocery checkouts, toll booths, fitness equipment, and banking are some ubiquitous examples of automation. Most people are increasingly comfortable asking Google to turn the lights on, or asking Siri to make local restaurant reservations. Many vehicles are now equipped with semi-autonomous technologies that go far beyond anti-lock braking systems and are capable of providing breaking, steering, and accelerator inputs to control the car.
People are comfortable flying even though they’re aware that planes use fly-by-wire technology including semi-automated systems in which a computer makes automatic adjustments to the flight based on electronic signals from sensors throughout the aircraft – with no direct control from a human pilot.
It’s true that we’re not close to a point where a robot can perform brain surgery autonomously. Some of the most sensitive, complex tasks requiring reasoning and decision-making unique to humans – whether they be performing a complete surgical procedure or navigating a car through a construction zone – will take a long time to fully automate. But in the short term, the vision of robotics isn’t to be completely autonomous. It’s to advance our capabilities to perform tasks more easily and skillfully, with intuitive and accessible tools. In the case of Vicarious Surgical’s robot, the vision is to increase access to minimally invasive surgery (for better patient outcomes), improve the job of performing a surgery for the clinical staff (for better surgeon and staff experience) all while improving the economics of surgical care (in order to enable hospitals and payers to continue to provide excellent care for their patients). Some of those benefits may be subtle or incremental, others more dramatic.
Dr. Barry Greene, MD, our Chief Medical Officer at Vicarious Surgical, says it best when he talks about how a surgeon may already be highly effective at performing a procedure with excellent patient outcomes, but a robot could potentially help them do the procedure better, easier, and faster enabling them to help more patients (and to generate more revenue for their practice).
I think people will adapt more easily to robots performing increasingly complex tasks than many realize. Robot-assisted surgeries have the potential to improve health outcomes for patients, make surgical robotics more accessible to communities facing a surgeon shortage, and enable surgeons to be more effective while freeing them up to perform more procedures.
When people understand the potential for robotic assistance to not only perform an abdominal surgery safely and effectively, but also reduce post-surgery complications and address gaps in the availability of surgical care, their comfort level with surgical robotics will only grow.