Medical Robot Design: From Clinical Need to Validation
An overview of the medical robot industry in 2023
The healthcare industry has enjoyed many breakthroughs in the field of medical robots in the last few decades. Medical robots have gone from simple machines performing rudimentary tasks to advanced constructs that assist surgeons during complex procedures. Thanks to medical robots, numerous surgical procedures have become safer. Robotic equipment allows doctors to perform operations with smaller incisions, fewer blood loss, and better recovery times.
In 2022, the medical industry in the US alone brought in 9.5 billion USD in revenue. This, along with a number of other significant factors, points to the fact that the clinical need for medical robots is growing at a massive pace.
Why Do We Need Medical Robots?
When we talk about medical robots, most people picture fully autonomous machines completely replacing human doctors. The reality of medical robots isn’t as exciting (yet), but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t amazing. Right now, medical robots are primarily working alongside doctors. Most robots are guided by human surgeons, allowing them to perform surgeries more efficiently. The simplest way to describe today’s medical robots is that they aren’t replacing surgeons, instead, they enhance the abilities of their users, i.e., surgeons.
Understanding Medical Robot Systems Development
The medical robot industry is currently branching out in two directions. The first consists of developing robotic systems that facilitate doctors. The second consists of developing fully autonomous robots that can completely replace human surgeons. Progress in the latter branch has been slow in comparison to the former. This is mostly due to the fact that there’s a lot of red tape involved in invalidating fully autonomous robot surgeons.
The biggest obstacle in developing autonomous robot systems is the ability to demonstrate the abilities of these systems in the real world. Typically, the validation process for medical equipment requires manufacturers to first rigorously test their product by themselves and then conduct extensive clinical trials.
Conducting clinical trials for a new scalpel or some other medical device is straightforward. All the manufacturer has to do is distribute samples of the product to several thousand practitioners, wait for them to use their equipment, and collect user data. This becomes challenging when a single product costs millions of dollars.
Validating medical robots alone requires a significant investment. There’s also a societal barrier to think about. Not everyone is open to the idea of experimenting with fully autonomous robots and allowing them to operate on humans without anyone monitoring them. The reluctance of society to accept fully autonomous robotic surgeons, along with its high-cost barrier and lack of clinical validation, is why the development of fully autonomous robots is considerably slower than semi-autonomous robots.
Medical Robots as Facilitators and Our Requirements
The first branch of the medical robot industry is having a far better time when it comes to adoption. These robots are controlled by trained and experienced human surgeons. This means that validating them is far simpler.
Right now, human-controlled medical robots are performing quite well. The primary requirements that we have from medical robots revolve around lowering costs, increasing operation success rates, and making doctors’ jobs easier. The medical robots that we have right now are doing a pretty good job of fulfilling these needs.
The medical robot industry is growing at a rapid pace, and more and more healthcare organizations are looking to invest in them. In the coming years, we can expect to see plenty of more growth in this field. Hopefully, as processes for validating new medical equipment become better, we will see a surge in the development and adoption of fully autonomous medical robots as well.