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Robotics Medicine

Doctors To Control Robot Surgeon With Their Eyes 99

Posted by kdawson from the no-saccades-please-we're-operating dept.
trogador writes "Researchers from Imperial College London are improving the Da Vinci surgical robot by installing an eye-tracker, which allows surgeons to control the robot's knife simply by looking at the patient's tissues on a screen. Tracking the eyes can generate a 3D map, which in turn can make moving organs — like a beating heart — appear to stand still for easier operation. Other features include 'see-through' tissues on the surgeon's screen (so tumors can be seen underneath tissues) and 'no-cut' zones, places where the robot won't allow the surgeon to cut by mistake. Says ICL Professor Guang Zhong Yang, 'We want to empower the robot and make it more autonomous.'"
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Doctors To Control Robot Surgeon With Their Eyes More

Doctors To Control Robot Surgeon With Their Eyes

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  • Ah yes ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Saturday March 22, 2008 @01:53PM (#22830908)
    but is it a Robot Chicken? If so, it's important to remember that when you're playing chicken the first one to blink loses.

  • But the real question: (Score:4, Funny)

    by theaceoffire ( 1053556 ) on Saturday March 22, 2008 @01:58PM (#22830930) Homepage
    ^_^ I foresee an issue with female clients.
    "AHHHH! NO, My eyes are UP HERE!"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ortho1 ( 1069020 )
      I agree with you to the fullest! The human body and especially its function is virtually impossible to be mimiced! I do not understand the point behind creation of such robot. Will it save time, reveal structures that have never been revealed, or be more successful than that of human control? Who really knows why!
  • The human body is not a machine, and we cannot even come close to mimicking one, let alone thousands to millions.

    I hope they have some biologists or MDs working on this robot, to take into account all those thousands of things the body does wrong that are impossible to predict. Nevermind machine failure or glitches.

    On a more ethical standpoint, being interested in Medicine and Machines myself, I feel this is going in the opposite direction of what I hope for medicine. Distancing doctors from patients,

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Aglassis ( 10161 )

      The human body is not a machine, and we cannot even come close to mimicking one, let alone thousands to millions.

      Why isn't the human body a machine? I'll grant that we can't mimic it but that doesn't mean that the systems of the body aren't mechanical in nature. Would you argue against using titanium rods to help with fractures, the use of plastic joints to replace failed joints, or other technologies that attempt to repair some mechanical failure in the body (including the use of micro-robots to perform surgery)?

      On a more ethical standpoint, being interested in Medicine and Machines myself, I feel this is going in the opposite direction of what I hope for medicine. Distancing doctors from patients, and life from reality may prove a nasty combo.

      Ethical? I'm not sure that word means what you think it means. You are advocating an almost supersti

      • Why isn't the human body a machine? I'll grant that we can't mimic it but that doesn't mean that the systems of the body aren't mechanical in nature. Would you argue against using titanium rods to help with fractures, the use of plastic joints to replace failed joints, or other technologies that attempt to repair some mechanical failure in the body (including the use of micro-robots to perform surgery)?

        I guess I wasn't clear with my earlier statement. I simply meant that there is no way that I would trust a machine like this to work in a general hospital. The human body is too complex for a machine to encompass and predict all possible outcomes. I understand the need and advancement of machines in the practice of medicine, but the concept of a still image being presented to a doctor, while he may need to see the moving image to watch for signs of some other problem, is a scary one to me.
        If the software

        • "The human body is too complex for a machine to encompass and predict all possible outcomes."

          It's too complex for a physician to predict all possible outcomes. Given the minimal time allowed each patient and the extreme pressure to see many patients while coping with all his/her other duties, technology as a medical "force multiplier" will become ever more necessary to empower the doctor as a "care supervisor".

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 )
      The human body is not a machine, and we cannot even come close to mimicking one, let alone thousands to millions.

      Wasn't that the whole point with using a machine?

      A human can only hold a knife so still and accurate where a machine could cut on an accuracy scales below a millimeter.

      I mean do we build planes with wings that flap like a bird? It would make sense to build a machine that does surgery without the flaws the inherit instability of the human hand.
      • Oh I completely see and agree with your point. I guess I didn't word mine correctly.
        But what about the flaws of the human mind? If a human writes the software that doesn't work, then the machine, or plane or whatever, doesn't work in all the cases. We, as humans, tend to jump to application far too quickly without understanding it first. In this sense, a machine is no longer a perfection, not even close. Far too many people die in car crashes than a perfect machine would allow.

        I know I hit on a few top
        • Who said perfect? Is the system this is designed to supplement/replace perfect? Not by a long shot.

          I don't normally get so blunt with people's opinions, but I think you're way off base here.
    • I feel this is going in the opposite direction of what I hope for medicine. Distancing doctors from patients, and life from reality may prove a nasty combo.

      Well, it's a good thing most of us aren't hoping for the same things you are. Most sophisticated medical technology "distances" a doctor from his patient to some degree ... like, for example, a stethoscope. Should a doctor be required to press his ears against a patient's chest to listen the heart and lungs?

      The issue here is that the human body has
      • Well, it's a good thing most of us aren't hoping for the same things you are. Most sophisticated medical technology "distances" a doctor from his patient to some degree ... like, for example, a stethoscope. Should a doctor be required to press his ears against a patient's chest to listen the heart and lungs?

        Interesting that you should mention the stethoscope. I'm a few years out of my work as a nurse, but when I was working in that field there was considerable resistance to the use of electronically assist
        • Interesting topic about information being lost in translation. It's not quite the same, in my opinion, as something say like a drawing of a microbe. Where that drawing is a representation of the microbe, but not really the microbe itself. Besides all those side topics, what do you think about the stethoscope or machine? Is there something lost in translation?

          Again, I'm agreeing that augmentation is a good thing, but the idea of removing the movement for better care doesn't make sense to me. It's taking t

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NIckGorton ( 974753 ) *

      On a more ethical standpoint, being interested in Medicine and Machines myself, I feel this is going in the opposite direction of what I hope for medicine. Distancing doctors from patients, and life from reality may prove a nasty combo.

      First, you need some distance. If you are in respiratory failure, I have precious little time to get you intubated and ventilated. That is not the time you want active listening and human touch. You want technical skill and someone who does not dick around. You may even want someone who has toys like this hella sexy video laryngoscope: http://medgadget.com/archives/2006/10/mcgrath_series.html [medgadget.com]

      Want.

      Of course with that I am less in touch with you physically and less likely to end up spattered in the hal

      • You hit right on my meaning of ethical debate. Besides the question whether or not the technology works, is it really that much better if the doctor is so far away from his patient?

        What about the incredibly common debate in House MD (I'm not being scientific, just generalized thinking here), which is background information. What if you don't know everything about your patient? What if I'm allergic to something in the process of that intubation and that quick thinking decision kills me?

        More on topic, what if
        • and that quick thinking decision kills me?

          The you're dead, just like you'll be if that doctor doesn't have what it takes to help you. Put it this way: if you have a competent ER physician on hand with the right equipment, you have a chance. Personally, I want that doctor to have the best medical technology available, because I want to live.
    • "Distancing doctors from patients, and life from reality may prove a nasty combo."

      I'd rather have a stable "machine tool" used to cut me for surgery than a less-precise human hand. Let the surgeons brain have a better interface with my repair process than just his imprecise fingers.

      This has nothing to do with "distancing" and everything to do with precision and control. If you want to use the tools they used on Mel Gibson in "Braveheart", have at it, but the point of advancing medical tech is to improve eff

  • jerky movement (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wizardforce ( 1005805 )
    !!! eye movement is jerky! why oh why would you use eye movement of all things to control a surgical instrament!? good thing that the robot will limit what areas the surgeon can cut

    • Re:jerky movement (Score:5, Informative)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Saturday March 22, 2008 @02:18PM (#22831108)
      Those movements are called "sacchades" and they are important to preventing retinal fatigue. They're actually fairly predictable and it shouldn't be hard to average them out.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Oktober Sunset ( 838224 )
        What if one of the surgeon's assistants is seriously hot and is in his peripheral vision? What gunna happen when the surgeons eyes keep darting to the nurses huge jugs?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by iabervon ( 1971 )
        You're thinking of microsaccades rather than saccades (which are larger scale jumps from one point of focus to a different point of focus). Microsaccades are probably actually actively helpful in precise eye tracking, because they end at the target of fixation, and therefore pick out the relevant spot within the area that the focus drifts within.
        • As I understand it, the primary function of saccades is to prevent retinal fatigue. Experiments have been performed where a grain-of-wheat lamp was literally glued to the eyeball. That way, the light source would move with the eye, and the corresponding image would be focused on the same area of the retina, regardless of eye motion. Within a few seconds, the image would fade and the light would become invisible as the retinal pigments were exhausted.

          This effect is even more noticeable with people who suf
    • As long as he doesn't go looking at the nurses breasts! I shudder to think what would happen with a gay surgeon and male nurses!
    • "Controlled with eye movement" Doesn't automatically mean that the robot is going to actually do anything to the place where the surgeon is looking. As the summary mentions, the eye-triggered commands could be as simple as switching a camera view, something that obviously isn't going to cut open the patient.

      I don't know why everyone on here seems to think that they're the first person to figure out that a robot shouldn't slice open a patient because the doctor blinked.

  • I for one welcome my robot surgeon! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) on Saturday March 22, 2008 @02:00PM (#22830942)
    Back when I was working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, I was stuck in a basement laboratory. One interesting thing was that there were old robots *everywhere*, including a big old surgical robot right beside my desk. It was really interesting, as it had two 6-Degrees of Freedom "scapel" controls, and a microscope-like magnifying viewer.

    I asked some folks about it, and they said that one of the main benefits was that they used Fourier transforms and other filtering to significantly reduce the "jitter" of the doctor's hands, without aversely affecting intentional motions. I thought that was really interesting, and might save a lot of complications. A former boss of mine has a surgeon for a father, and he said it was quite common fifty years ago for them to have an alcoholic beverage before a surgery to steady their nerves, and seems to think this was effective. I suppose the robotic version wouldn't have all the downsides.

    I also think an interesting possibility for this technology is plastic surgery - one of the biggest current problems with plastic surgery isn't expense (a lot of things people want aren't that expensive), it's the risk of complication, which can be quite significant. My brother did not get his face repaired after breaking a cheekbone due to this risk.

    This would especially be good for individuals who have recently lost a lot of weight - there's a lot of self consciousness about excess skin, and being able to safely remove it with much reduced risk of complications would go a long way towards helping these people feel better about themselves (which is one way to help keep the weight off).

    So yes, I for one welcome my robot surgeon. Some day it might save my life!
  • Says ICL Professor Guang Zhong Yang

    Now that's a good, traditional British name. Wonder what his family crest looks like.
    • Now that's a good, traditional British name. Wonder what his family crest looks like.

      You've never heard the phrase 'a good Englishman is 99% foreign'?

      My Family are English, and have lived in the UK for centuries, yet my Surname is Nordic. Extremely so in fact, It hasn't been englicised at all, in all this time, which I find quite odd. I've had no end of problems over the years with it being spelled wrong.

      • I've had no end of problems over the years with it being *spelled* wrong.
        The way you spelt that word suggests that you is Americaine?

        Cheers!
        • The way you spelt that word suggests that you is Americaine?

          Nope, but since the overwhelming majority of my exposure to the written word has been early american SF (can't help it, I worship at the alter of Gernsback) , I do find that my spelling is some sort of mutant hybrid between those of our two countries.

          Add to that a fascination for pre eighteenth century European dictionaries, and you end up with a vocabulary which is positively weird. I gave up trying to conform to the language norms of my country a

  • Has to be said (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I, for one, welcome our robot-controlling doctor overlords.

  • Precision? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Saturday March 22, 2008 @02:04PM (#22830994)
    "It shows you the tumour in relation to its anatomical structure," Darzi said. That means the surgeon can be more precise and avoid cutting out large amounts of healthy tissue.

    Lack of precision isn't the only reason surgeons remove large amounts of apparently "healthy" tissue along with a tumor ... it's to make sure they get all of it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by repvik ( 96666 )
      They cut out a fair bit because they simply can't see the tumor... Cutting a safety margin comes on top of that again.
    • You would like a good margin around the entire tumor. If you were able to precisely get 1cm margins all around that would be far preferable to getting 1.7 cm margins in one place and 0.1 cm margins in another. As it stands even if the ideal is 1cm, you often shoot for more on average because you would rather have one place that is 3cm than one place that is 0.1 cm.

      So precision would definitely give you less tissue loss, if nothing else than by allowing a smaller target for margins.
  • We want to empower the robot and make it more autonomous.

    This won't end well.

  • Great research, but still only research! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by neapolitan ( 1100101 ) * on Saturday March 22, 2008 @02:09PM (#22831042)
    I am a doctor that does surgical procedures (mainly pacemaker device implantations).

    These kind of devices are very much experimental, and pop up in the news every couple of months (a slashdot search can reveal similar ideas), but quite far away from any sort of typical use. Right now heart bypass surgery is decidedly low-tech, with a surgeon viewing the beating heart with loupe glasses and very skillfully lasso-ing the coronary arteries. It is a great fantasy in the hearts of all doctors to have a machine that offsets any heart movement -- it would make things much easier if reliable. The article doesn't mention that the movement would also have to be coupled with respiratory movement, and have some sort of fail-safe in the case of patient or external movement.

    However, standard surgery is still not done using these tools. There are way too many items required to make this feasible in the near future ( 10 years IMHO, although I hope I'm wrong!)

      - Testing: This is literally a life-and-death situation, and any robot "error" in a real person is likely to set the technology back 5 years after it hits the press and hospital review boards. Very, very damaging PR.
      - Education: Surgeons would have to essentially be re-trained to use such a system.
      - Feedback: It is really, really difficult to give an operator feedback on how something "feels." Part of during surgery (no kidding) a surgeon will often run his finger along cardiac arteries -- you can almost "feel" the calcified plaque in a diseased vessel. It would be really hard to approximate anything like this with a virtual robot.
      - Cost: Labor is relatively cheap compared to the capital expenditure to R&D something like this... of course, this will change as time goes by.

    Exciting news, but incremental technology.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
      Da Vinci is FDA approved and used clinically in a number of hospitals. Robotic surgery for EVERYTHING is a long way off, and I doubt eye controlled surgery will ever be useful, but robotic surgery for some procedures is here now.
      • I guess it depends what you mean by "used clinically." These generally are technology expos as part of a clinical trial -- FDA approval allows you to use it on a person, but you can bet that the patient signed a very long form indicating he is part of a research study / nonstandard procedure. Reading a few articles about this indicates the most high volume centers have done ~100 of these "robotic procedures," and mine (a major Harvard teaching hospital) has done... zero.

        I'm all for it too -- but again, I

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
          In the first paragraph you say that nobody in your centre has done any robotic surgery, then in the last paragraph you mention that the GI doctors have. A "remote device", unless I've completely misunderstood you, is a robot, and may well actually BE a Da Vinci robot. It is not an autonomous robot, but it is a robot.

          I agree, autonomous surgery, where the procedure is under the control of a computer is a long way off. Non-autonomous robotic surgery is not.

          I notice that Massachusetts has nine Da Vinci robo
          • Your attitude is why I don't post here much.

            Dude, stop being the contrarian, it does not make you sound "smart," only childish and argumentative. People will treat you better in life if you ask questions for clarification instead of trying to trap somebody into silly fallacies to "prove your point," as the first sentence in your response. Occasionally we have trainees with your style, and gradually they socialize. :)

            Again, I'm not sure the name of the GI device -- I saw a tech demo of it in one of our vir

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
              I wasn't trying to trap you, but by your response maybe I did?

              Since we're trading silly insults, I've heard some surgeons don't really like any hint they might be wrong, about anything, even if its just a silly mistake or outside their field of expertise.

              For your information (or rather for someone else reading this who is actually interested), Da Vinci appears to be fully FDA certified, NOT as a research device, for some procedures since 2000 or 2001. I believe they have been certified for some endoscopic
            • I was just thinking that your posts were the reason I come to Slashdot. Well-informed experts always have interesting, relevant things to say about the articles and are a pleasure to learn from. That's all to say, don't be talked out of posting just by the one person who didn't understand your post.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Artuir ( 1226648 )
              Yes and as a few others said, people like you are why we enjoy coming to slashdot. Thank you for giving all of us insight on what it is you do - it's not every day I get to converse with a surgeon. Thanks for doing the job you do and being so adamant about learning how to do it better - I know quite a few in this audience (me likely included) will likely be requiring similar services someday in the future, sadly. We all ought to be very grateful.
              • Well, thanks guys. I am happy to provide the perspective of an MD in a sub-specialty. I actually paged a few of my friends that do CT surgery to ask them if they used the da Vinci system because I was curious. All of them had heard of it, and a few had been in cases with it, and again, unfortunately, all of them said it was a sideshow currently. At another major teaching hospital, the most experienced surgeon had about 100 cases with the device: far, far fewer than standard (they do 2-3 operations *per
    • Testing: This is literally a life-and-death situation, and any robot "error" in a real person is likely to set the technology back 5 years after it hits the press and hospital review boards. Very, very damaging PR.

      Google Heart Surgery solved this with a "Beta" sticker.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NMerriam ( 15122 )
      These kind of devices are very much experimental, and pop up in the news every couple of months...but quite far away from any sort of typical use.

      They are used somewhat routinely in many hospitals across the US, Canada and Europe. It's been several years since they were research-only. The only reason they aren't used more frequently is simply the cost and size, even the places that use them regularly only have one OR set up with the equipment, while they may be running two dozen ORs on a daily basis.

      You're

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jrau ( 880696 )

      I recently had an OB/GYN professor (I'm a medical student) give us a lecture on using the Da Vinci for post-menopausal hysterectomies. Apparently he makes only 5 small incisions superior and lateral to the umbilicus (hence the post-menopausal, it can't be covered with a bikini). He said he uses it quite frequently, and that when hiring new physicians heavily considers whether they have been trained in robotic procedures during their residency/fellowship.

      He also said that they expected to have force feed

  • Oh. My. God. (Score:4, Funny)

    by ChaoticLimbs ( 597275 ) on Saturday March 22, 2008 @02:17PM (#22831100) Journal
    I am so glad I am not a woman with really nice tits.

    • Re:breasts (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheMeuge ( 645043 )
      Here's a curious anecdote, that I feel is appropriate to the joke.

      I was looking for some clinical experience between the first and second years of med school, so I shadowed a surgeon, who specialized in breast tumors, and wound up spending lots of time in a "breast clinic" (screening and followup) for about a month and a half. While I probably saw some great breasts, I never felt aroused. Given that I am a very sexually-active heterosexual man, I was amazed at how my mindset was able to adjust itself, and h
    • But doctor, I came in for a lung transplant, not a double mastectomy!

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
      I am so glad I am not a woman with really nice tits.

      Yeah. Me too.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Artuir ( 1226648 )
      What if you're a man with really nice tits? I think that might complicate things.
  • I wouldn't want to be under the knife at that moment when a gaze is diverted.

  • Eye control? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Saturday March 22, 2008 @02:26PM (#22831176)
    Why? I did some work on development of a surgical robot. Surgeons use their tactile senses a lot, and its important to have 3D haptic feedback. Why in the world would you want to control a robot with your eyes? You can't even tell it how hard or deep to cut.

    • Why in the world would you want to control a robot with your eyes? You can't even tell it how hard or deep to cut.

      Because most surgeons only have two hands. This represents a new means of input and control. Think of it as using both your hands and feet for driving. You can certainly drive with only your hands and a setup with the brake and gas on the steering wheel. However, having the break and gas operated by the feet gives the driver greater ability to use his hands for steering or drinking his coffee while shaving and eating a muffin.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
        This is the example you use to demonstrate that eye controlled surgery is a GOOD idea??

        To use a slightly different example, you could give a guy in a tank a bunch of video cameras, eye controlled aiming (already exists) and a voice command fire control, plus the regular driving controls. You don't, you build tanks to use a crew of typically three. How come? Because when job performance counts it's best to use multiple people, not overload one. Particularly not with flakey, taxing things like eye control

    • You can't even tell it how hard or deep to cut.
      Come on - that's when you start staring.
      Hard stare = cut hard.
      Deep and meaningful stare = cut deep, or kiss the surgeon.
      1000-yard stare = sever an artery and go to sleep with the sweet sweet sounds of 'Nam ringing in your ears.

      Although, really, it's a robot. How softly can it move a scalpel?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
        A group in my lab is building one (with full haptic feedback) that can scale down the surgeon's movements to micrometre accuracy. So it can move a scalpel pretty softly indeed. Superhumanly softly.

    • sfd (Score:1)

      by voalse ( 1252046 )
      http://research.yale.edu/berkeleydivinity/forum/page,viewtopic/p,305/#305 [slashdot.org] >CHEAP PHENTERMINE WITHOUT A PRESCRIPTION
    • Since you have two eyes which are somewhat distanced, you can perceive your surroundings in 3D. I assume the eye trackers used would take both eyes into account and determine what you are looking at.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
        And they'd record that you're focused on the surface of your 2D monitor....

        Da Vinci is mostly used for endoscopic surgery where you can't directly see the surgical field, robot or no. Even if you use some kind of 3D, do you really want your surgery to depend on where your surgeon looks?

        Okay, I want to cut here, here and here, but NOT there... oh crap.
  • "...it ain't a robot"? Aren't robots autonomous? If not, my car is a robot.

  • Tracking the eyes can generate a 3D map, which in turn can make moving organs -- like a beating heart -- appear to stand still for easier operation.
    What is this, Trauma Center with doctors being given the Healing Touch? Is this what they meant when new science will make surgery like playing a video game?
    • The last thing I'd need is the robot carving a 'star' shape into my aorta in an attempt to slow down time :P
  • I, for one, welcome our new robot controlling overlords.
  • Well, this probably means that they'll be banning provocative Nurse wear in the OR. Wouldn't want the surgeon's eyes to wander and stare at boobies while trying to give some poor schmuck a vasectomy.

    "Heeeeey, how you doin'?? Whooops! Sorry dude! My bad."
  • The white zone is for immediate prepping and recovery of patients only. There is no cutting in a red zone.
    The white zone is for immediate prepping and recovery of patients only. There is no cutting in a red zone.
    The red zone is for immediate prepping and recovery of patients only. There is no cutting in a white zone.
    No, the white zone is for prepping. Now, there is no cutting in a RED zone.
    The red zone has always been for prepping.
    Don't you tell me which zone is for prepping, and which zone is for recovery.
  • I did some research on robots (the only one left is Da Vinci, having all the patents and bought out all competitors) in surgery as part of my Mechanical Engineering study, and the biggest drawbacks where:

    - Lack of Haptic Feedback
    - No real proven procedural benefits
    - Expensive device (1.5 million euro's)
    - 150000 euro's each year for the service contract
    - Instruments 2000-5000 euro a piece, with a chip that only enables them to be used 10 times
    - Optics cost 700 euro to sterilize, takes a while and the hospita
  • We want to empower the robot and make it more autonomous.
    • [Leela]: Well at least here you'll be treated with dignity. Now strip naked and get on the probulator.
    • [Fry]: Ooo!
  • "Alright... we're going to cut a portion of the OOOH SHINY!"

    *flatline*

  • On Friday, I had a balloon angioplasty & stent put in -- the procedure was done at St. Joseph's [slashdot.org] in Atlanta, which is one of the main training centers for the daVinci system. If my case had required bypass surgery, it might well have been done by the daVinci.
  • 2 beered up surgeons in theatre:-

    "Check it out - I even closed!"
    "OK smart arse - so you can do an appendectomy with your eyes huh? - let's see you do one using your tongue then!"

  • As you might surmise, I am a heart surgeon, and I have used the DaVinci system. (FYI the precursor is housed in the MIT tech museum on campus).

    An unfortunate trend in medicine (particularly when it comes to the heart), is that marketing an idea/gizmo (and owning stock in the company) is extremely lucrative, as the delivery of heart care is highly competitive, and lots of money can be made if you are the "first" in your area to have a "new" technology. Hence, there is high interest in offering the latest pro
  • 'We want to empower the robot and make it more autonomous.' When the robot uprising happens I will not help humanity precisely because of statements like these
    • 'We want to empower the robot and make it more autonomous.' When the robot uprising happens I will not help humanity precisely because of statements like these

      I wouldn't worry too much until you start hearing statements like "We want to empower the super-smart AI and make it more autonomous."

  • Uh Oh (Score:1)

    by Vexor ( 947598 )
    My Doctor is cross-eyed :(
  • HAL: "I'm sorry Dave, but I can't let you do that"

    DAVE: "But HAL, it's a tumor, it's got to come out!"

    HAL: "My records show this patient hasn't paid their insurance premium this month. I'm very sorry Dave, I can't let you operate."

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