The National Research Council of Canada recently released some very interesting news describing the progress that it is being made with the world’s first MTI-compatible, image-guided neurosurgical robot. The device is dubbed the NeuroArm. Now, I’m no brain surgeon, but I have followed the progress that a company called Intuitive Surgical has been making in the field of robotic-assisted prostatecomies, and it might interest you to know that in 2005 the company was performing less 1% of all prostectomies. Today, it is performing over 50%!
The reason this is occurring is because the da Vinci robot (which is still controlled by a surgeon using a computer) is so precise that the surgury is only minimally invasive, and this allows the patient to leave the hospital in one to two days. Patients who have a traditional operation must stay five to seven days. Of course, this extra stay costs hospitals a great deal of money and they now have a vested interest in switching patients over to the robotic-asisted surgery. Not surprisingly, convincing patients to undergo a robotic-assisted operation has been made easier because they are not only told the scar will be much smaller but they will also get out of the hospital much sooner.
The NeuroArm and similar neurosurgical robots are the wave of the future. They may not be performing many operations today, but my guess is that just as Intuitive Surgical’s Da Vinci robots now control the prostatectomy market, neurosurgical robots will contol the brain surgery market in 5 to 10 years.
If you are so inclined, I recommend the following 10-minute video from Wired Science which shows how the da Vinci robot is now beginning to assist with heart surgery:
In an unrelated bit of Canadian-related medical news (apparently there must be something in the water in Canada that is causing them to embrace the future technology more quickly than their American colleagues), Canadian researchers have teamed up with IBM to make use of the company’s World Community Grid — a vast network of personal computers and laptops that is the equivalent of one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
The significance of this item is that the researchers have been able to analyze the results of a large number experiments on proteins. So powerful is the supercomputer that if the reseachers had had to rely on a regular computer to crunch the data it would have taken them 162 years! Using the World Community Grid they did it in two years!
It is a wonderful example of ”jumping the curve” because this research is likely to help medical researchers the world over better understand how defective proteins cause cancer in our bodies, as well as diagnose cancer sooner.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, robotics, RFID, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
