Study Finds Robot Surgeons Are Actually Slower and More Expensive (theregister.co.uk) 44
"Robot-assisted surgery costs more time and money than traditional methods, but isn't more effective, for certain types of operations," reports the Register, in an article shared by schwit1:
In a study of almost 24,000 laparoscopic surgeries just published in The Journal of American Medicine, researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine analyzed data from 416 hospitals around the U.S. from 2003 to 2015. Robotic assistance provides 3D-visualization, a broader range of motion for instruments, and better ergonomics for physicians, according to the study. While it has advantages in scenarios where a high-degree of precision is required or where improved outcomes have been demonstrated (like radical prostatectomy), it appears to be a waste of resources for the two operations examined... But the patient outcomes were more or less the same.
A thematically-related economic study presented by the National Bureau for Economic Research on Monday suggests that while AI and machine learning have received substantial investment over the past five years and have been widely touted as a transformative technologies, "there is little sign that they have yet affected aggregate productivity statistics... The simplest possibility is that the optimism about the potential technologies is misplaced and unfounded," muse Erik Brynjolfsson and Daniel Rock (MIT), Chad Syverson (University of Chicago) in the paper.
But instead the paper's author suggest that fully realizing the benefits of AI "will require effort and entrepreneurship to develop the needed complements, and adaptability at the individual, organizational, and societal levels to undertake the associated restructuring."
A thematically-related economic study presented by the National Bureau for Economic Research on Monday suggests that while AI and machine learning have received substantial investment over the past five years and have been widely touted as a transformative technologies, "there is little sign that they have yet affected aggregate productivity statistics... The simplest possibility is that the optimism about the potential technologies is misplaced and unfounded," muse Erik Brynjolfsson and Daniel Rock (MIT), Chad Syverson (University of Chicago) in the paper.
But instead the paper's author suggest that fully realizing the benefits of AI "will require effort and entrepreneurship to develop the needed complements, and adaptability at the individual, organizational, and societal levels to undertake the associated restructuring."
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a time when what were once called horseless carriages was slower than using a horse,.
Give it time.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
The study says even less than that. It's more like some horseless carriages were slower than some horses, on an odd-numbered Wednesday if there's an R in the month and the wind's blowing from the east.
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There was a time when what were once called horseless carriages was slower than using a horse,.
Give it time.
There was a time when only simple minimum wage jobs were being threatened by robotics and automation.
Now, those making six figure salaries are being threatened. I doubt that "time" will ever come.
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There was a time when only simple minimum wage jobs were being threatened by robotics and automation.
I would have thought that in some areas, the opposite happened: we had brilliant computer algebra systems and automated theorem proving systems long before people seriously started considering self-driving cars to replace badly-paid drivers.
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One argument for Robotic Surgery in the case of difficult surgery is that the surgeon isn't as worn out while doing the surgery. The results may wind up being the same in terms of efficacy but it's less work overall for the surgeon.
The surgery typically takes an hour longer than doing it manually, so I don't know what that will do to the doctor's efficiency.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the robot, one or two thousand dollars extra in consumables per operation and fewer operations performed each day . . . hmm.
Here's a radio interview from last week with the guy who did the study:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/no-benefits-to-robotic-colorectal-surgery,-study-says/9122822#transcript
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Trump apparently doesn't.
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"Chairman Mao" disarmed his people, then killed 20 million of his countrymen who opposed him. The bottom line is that we vote against ANYONE that we feel is likely to pass even the slightest of "gun control" legislation. Between the despots exterminating opposition, and the fact that "gun control" legislation absolutely does not work, the opposition cannot find anyone that we would not vote for as long as Democrats demonstrate their willingness to go down the same road as past communists.
Way to miss the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, these people completely missed the point of these procedure techniques. They are not intended to make surgery more efficient or cheaper. They are intended to make them SAFER. They have a much lower impact on the human body and produce much less shock. They have shorter recovery time. They produce drastically less scarring.
Amazing how wildly out-of-touch technologists can be that they consider speed and cost to be more important than the health and well-being of the patient.
Re:Way to miss the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody did that here. They looked at 3 cases: Open surgery, laparoscopic surgery, and robot assisted laparoscopic surgery. They found that laparoscopic beat open in patient outcomes (so it's a good thing). They further found that adding the robot did nothing to improve outcomes but did cost more (a bad thing) and take longer (also bad and potentially a safety risk).
An exception, called out in the summary, is radical prostatectomy where the robot did improve outcomes.
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The short version is: hammers are useful tools, but not for all jobs.
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They found that laparoscopic beat open in patient outcomes (so it's a good thing). They further found that adding the robot did nothing to improve outcomes but did cost more (a bad thing) and take longer (also bad and potentially a safety risk).
Unfortunately when you make statistics like this it's never the same doctor operating on the same patient. For example, it's quite possible that younger doctors are prevalent when it comes to robot-assisted surgery while older and more experienced doctors who had to learn to do it on their own continue to do so and that the actual difference is due to differences in experience not technique. It's also possible that those who do robot-assisted surgery can do it with less training than the unassisted ones wit
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they consider speed and cost to be more important than the health and well-being of the patient.
RTFM:
"But the patient outcomes were more or less the same."
Amazing
is that you can't even read
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And how does safer appear, other than a different patient outcome (which did not happen)?
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In many ways we seem to but everything of value into dollars and cents. The value of money is based on how much there is of it and how badly do you want it.
There are some things in life are quite valuable however it may be overlooked or very common. We have as a culture have gotten too fixated about money and the economy. I am no hippie or communist I understand the need for money and wish to make more of it, however it isn’t the only thing in life. Technology doesn’t always save money, but
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How is "But the patient outcomes were more or less the same" a statement that all we care about is dollars and cents. If the more expensive equipment didn't yield better medical outcomes, it's just wasting the patient's money (or the insurance coverage). The US already has bloated healthcare costs, because people like the latest, greatest stuff. But if the medical outcomes are the same, we're all better off doing things at lower cost, because that leaves more resources for other things of greater medical va
Not factoring cost/time of training a surgeon (Score:1)
If you factor in how much it costs to raise and train a human surgeon then the maths come out a lot different. And yes, there's a tremendous upfront cost in creating and training an "AI" surgeon but that is ultimately spread across all the units developed, even completely new models will generally build off of previous generations. The cost of training a human surgeon is per-unit and will only decrease when we get wet wired to accept pluggable skills/memories and/or vat grown humans "born" mature.
Design you fools (Score:3)
In other words, human doctors have made absolutely sure that the surgeries they design are easily done by the surgeon doing the planning, rather than saying "Hey, I'm not sure if I can avoid killing you, but what the hell, let's give it a shot."
No freaking da.
Sample size (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, I'd even go far as to argue that the real story here is how something as insignificant as this was given this much attention and how badly it's very specific conclusions were over-extrapolated to make a headline as eye-catching as possible.
Re:Sample size (Score:5, Insightful)
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2nd Opinion (Score:2)
My wife is an anesthesiologist (Score:2)
and she tells me that she and all her coworkers hate robotic surgery cases. They take much longer which increases the risk of anesthesia related complications, especially for older patients.