Robots are needed in healthcare to enhance quality, accessibility and efficiency of healthcare and making them more personalized and affordable for people. Use of Robots in health care is still limited due to several technological challenges involved. Some of the key innovation areas in this field are follows:
- Smart medical Capsules: micro or nano-robots in a capsule that can travel through the body parts carrying out highly precise and localized drug delivery or operations thereby minimizing the risks and increasing the success rates. No working prototype is available so far. People are looking into an application where nanorobots could be used for precision eye surgery.
- Robotised surgery: Attributes of good surgery like precision, accuracy and repeatability could be enhanced by using robots and automating the surgical process. It is now possible to have a system that can facilitate minimally invasive surgery, remote tele-surgery, preoperative planning, surgical training, intra-operative navigation (image-guided surgery) and surgical simulation all from one place. One such example is "Da Vinci Surgical Robot" from Intuitive Surgical Systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Surgical_System) , http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/products/davinci_surgical_system/ .
-Intelligent Prosthetics: Advance control systems and mechatronics could be used for building artificial limbs which could be controlled through brain or the nervous system. It would be possible in future to regain full functionality with artificial limbs. One such example is "C-Leg" from Otto Bock Corporation (http://www.ottobockus.com/), (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Bock).
- Robotised Motor Coordination Analysis and Therapy: Robots could be used for providing physical therapy in the treatment of patients with traumatised motor control, for example following stroke. These robots could be programmed to provide different kinds of physical therapies which can improve the restoration of central motor coordination of the nervous system. One such example is the Lokomat System from Hocoma (http://www.hocoma.com/products/lokomat/).
- Robot assisted mental, cognitive and social therapy: Robots could be used for increasing the social interaction of people with mental, social or cognitive handicap (autistic children and elders with dementia) by enhancing their social skills through therapeutic exercises. The robots could be programmed to generative communicative reactions, participate in playing games or stimulate friendly face expressions. One such system is Kaspar (http://kaspar.herts.ac.uk/). There is a research group at University of Delaware which looks into developing robots that can be used for rehabilitating infants with disabled mobility. http://www.udel.edu/research/media/babiesrobots.html
- Robotised patient monitoring system: There is a great need for robots which not only helps the elder people to carry out daily routines but also keeps monitoring the vitals of the patients. It can assist the person in walking, providing support in sitting, sleeping or getting up from bed, May assist in fetching things and can also interact through speech or vision. It can identify urgency situations and can inform nearby hospital. The doctors can also communicate with this robot remotely to collect or analyse the stored patient data etc. One example of such systems is Care-o-robot from Fraunhofer IPA (http://www.ros.org/wiki/Robots/Care-O-bot) (http://www.care-o-bot.de/english/).
Reference:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/health/docs/studies/robotics_healthcare/robotics-in-healthcare.pdf
- Smart medical Capsules: micro or nano-robots in a capsule that can travel through the body parts carrying out highly precise and localized drug delivery or operations thereby minimizing the risks and increasing the success rates. No working prototype is available so far. People are looking into an application where nanorobots could be used for precision eye surgery.
- Robotised surgery: Attributes of good surgery like precision, accuracy and repeatability could be enhanced by using robots and automating the surgical process. It is now possible to have a system that can facilitate minimally invasive surgery, remote tele-surgery, preoperative planning, surgical training, intra-operative navigation (image-guided surgery) and surgical simulation all from one place. One such example is "Da Vinci Surgical Robot" from Intuitive Surgical Systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Surgical_System) , http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/products/davinci_surgical_system/ .
-Intelligent Prosthetics: Advance control systems and mechatronics could be used for building artificial limbs which could be controlled through brain or the nervous system. It would be possible in future to regain full functionality with artificial limbs. One such example is "C-Leg" from Otto Bock Corporation (http://www.ottobockus.com/), (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Bock).
- Robotised Motor Coordination Analysis and Therapy: Robots could be used for providing physical therapy in the treatment of patients with traumatised motor control, for example following stroke. These robots could be programmed to provide different kinds of physical therapies which can improve the restoration of central motor coordination of the nervous system. One such example is the Lokomat System from Hocoma (http://www.hocoma.com/products/lokomat/).
- Robot assisted mental, cognitive and social therapy: Robots could be used for increasing the social interaction of people with mental, social or cognitive handicap (autistic children and elders with dementia) by enhancing their social skills through therapeutic exercises. The robots could be programmed to generative communicative reactions, participate in playing games or stimulate friendly face expressions. One such system is Kaspar (http://kaspar.herts.ac.uk/). There is a research group at University of Delaware which looks into developing robots that can be used for rehabilitating infants with disabled mobility. http://www.udel.edu/research/media/babiesrobots.html
- Robotised patient monitoring system: There is a great need for robots which not only helps the elder people to carry out daily routines but also keeps monitoring the vitals of the patients. It can assist the person in walking, providing support in sitting, sleeping or getting up from bed, May assist in fetching things and can also interact through speech or vision. It can identify urgency situations and can inform nearby hospital. The doctors can also communicate with this robot remotely to collect or analyse the stored patient data etc. One example of such systems is Care-o-robot from Fraunhofer IPA (http://www.ros.org/wiki/Robots/Care-O-bot) (http://www.care-o-bot.de/english/).
Reference:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/health/docs/studies/robotics_healthcare/robotics-in-healthcare.pdf
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