In a panel session on medical electronics Thursday morning (Jan. 8th) at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Howard Jay Chizek, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, posed—as one futuristic possibility in medicine—a scenario in which one doctor simultaneously directs robots doing several routine surgical procedures on different patients, without even washing his hands between operations.
These and other medical advances are within reach, according to the members of a panel called "Your Robot Will See You Now," except for one overshadowing issue: who pays and how.
In a panel session on medical electronics Thursday morning (Jan. 8th) at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Howard Jay Chizek, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington, posed—as one futuristic possibility in medicine—a scenario in which one doctor simultaneously directs robots doing several routine surgical procedures on different patients, without even washing his hands between operations.
These and other medical advances are within reach, according to the members of a panel called "Your Robot Will See You Now," except for one overshadowing issue: who pays and how.
Subtly, but repeatedly, panel members lamented the fact that technology holds amazing potential for gathering complex information from patients and applying it to prevention and treatment, but that the U.S. health care system inhibits or prohibits many of these available innovations.
Among the most prominent obstacles to technology-enhanced care is the absence of a unified medical records system that could follow a patient all over the world, at the touch of a keystroke.
Click here for the full article, published on EE Times Asia.
