Telerobotic Surgery A Reality

Moby Cock writes "Aquanauts on board NASA's NEEMO7 have successfully completed simulated gall bladder surgery with 'coaching' from a surgeon half a continent away. The story is covered at space.com and the Globe and Mail. The project is aimed at studying the feasiblity of dealing with medical emergencies in space on the ISS. "We have learned that it is possible, and quite safe, to telementor an untrained person through a complex medical task," said Dr. Mehran Anvari, one of the principal investigators from the McMaster University Centre for Minimal Access Surgery."

Quite safe you say?

[crstophr]

Fine, YOU go first.

Re:Quite safe you say?

[secretsquirel]

I'm sure that there arte PLENTY of people who would love to go first. Say you live in a small town in some 3rd world country. When your choices of treatment are a "quite safe" tele-surgery or your local witchdoctor you might have a different perspective on things. So how long till I'm getting spam saying I can grow 8 inches over then phone?

Ripple effect...

[mintrepublic]

This could have some interesting effects eventually on the medical industry at large. The military could use this kind of thing to lower their need for medical personnel, or especially long space flights.

Re:Ripple effect...

[modest apricot]

Very true, yet another piece of technology that has wondeful applications in our not-so-distant future. However, knowing the miltiary and NASA, this will never replace a good old doctor if anything for sheer redundancy.

I atteneded a few lectures on possible plans for a mission to the moon/mars/beyond, and a former astronaut said one of the most important qualities they were looking for in astronaut applications was medical ability. NASA would never consider a mission to anywhere distant without a competent surgeon or the like on board.

Re:Ripple effect...

[baywulf]

And given enough time and refinements, we can outsource surgeons also.

In other news - Mars Landing now a Reality!

[bergeron76]

A simulation was completed successfully today.

Quite safe...

[skinfitz]

...until you forget to pay the phone bill.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Malpractice?

[Spykk]

I wonder who is responsible for a botched surgery, the untrained proxy or the doctor on the other end of the line?

Re:Malpractice?

[Ford Prefect]

I wonder who is responsible for a botched surgery, the untrained proxy or the doctor on the other end of the line?

Simple.

Anything goes wrong, blame it on lag.

Or claim it's due to the patient being a 'ch34tign h4x0r c4mp1ng l4m3r', or whatever. :-)

HaHa!

[kawaichan]

Just wait like ten more years and all the doctors will bitch about how their jobs got outsourced to india and china

"reality" != "simulation"

[museumpeace]

the feat reported is certainly valid news and the techniques of remote control surgery will have application beyond medical emergencies in space
BUT PLEASE: saying something is a reality when it has only been simulated is misleading! How much would you pay the doctor who says "I have simulated removal of your tumor"? Reality is billable.

Been done already

[Rufus88]

This is really really old news. And I'm not talking about a simulation either. Check out this page [trueforce.com] and scroll down to September 20, 2001. Here's [hoise.com]another link.

NASA? NOAA?

[Computerguy5]

According to the NEEMO site, NEEMO is the name of the mission, while the aquanauts are on board the NOAA Aquarius Underwater Laboratory. To say that these people are aboard a mission is a bit... well... odd.

I don't bring it up to be a grammar nazi. I bring it up because I was rather confused for a moment, and others might be as well.

Golly...

[CodeWanker]

When he said "The Blue Screen of Death" he REALLY meant it.

Who would use this if they have a choice?

[dtolman]

One network outage and the patient could be toast. Unless they can guarentee 99.99999% reliability, I can't imagine they will EVER use this, unless it is for places where they have no choice (space, antarctica, etc)