The Medical Robot

1 The Medical Robot Introduction Picture a world where patients with conditions that are difficult to diagnosis, receive an accurate diagnosis, and hence begin treatment promptly; or a world where organs are easily printed for transplant patients and as a result, they do not have to be put on a waiting list where it may take months or even years to find a matching donor. A world where people with ailments that may otherwise never have been discovered receive life-saving treatment on time, and one where victims of fires, car accident and acid attacks whose skin has been irreparably destroyed can get a complete skin graft. Modern medical research has developed a robot which is able to achieve all these. The diagram shows Al, a robot that has two functions; diagnosing ailments and 3D organ printing. Al is a robot that is made of stainless steel, platinum, glass and plastic. It has three tentacles, on which it stands and a camera which it uses for printing and scanning body images and organs. It is an electric robot which requires charging after every twenty-four continuous hours of use. This paper features an analysis of Al’s role in the medical field and performs a study of how it will change the healthcare industry. In essence, the invention of the healthcare robot is a significant step toward the future of healthcare.

Buy this excellently written paper or order a fresh one from ace-myhomework.com

2

The Invention The robot was created in 2018, by Dr. John Taylor, a medical researcher at Grey’s University Hospital and Dr. Mark Ronson, an IT professor at Massachusettes Institute of Technology (MIT). In the course of his career as a medical scientist and surgeon, Dr. Taylor realized that two of the major challenges that had a significant negative impact on a patient’s mortality were; early diagnosis for chronic and non-chronic conditions, and finding organ donors. He noted that patients’ conditions would often deteriorate and lead to death as they awaited a diagnosis or to find a suitable organ donor (Pham, 2017).

In 2007, he developed the concept of a multi-functional medical robot that could serve two purposes; to aid in the diagnosis of patients who reported feeling unwell but their illnesses could not be discovered, and to print 3D organs for patients urgently in need of organs. Dr. Ronson, on the other hand, was passionate about using technology for medical intervention and had vast knowledge and experience in creating medical robots. He had previously created robots that were used for assisting in sensitive surgeries and endoscopy, and was looking forward to developing even more advanced medical tools and robots. When Dr. Taylor approached Dr. Ronson with the concept, he was willing to participate, and lent his time and effort towards the project. Collaboratively, between 2007 and 2018, through trial and error, they developed Al; one of the world’s most intelligent robots. Al is a crucial invention because it will transform healthcare and make people’s lives better.

Medical Robotics Industry Analysis The robotics industry is growing fast in North America, Asia, and Europe. The primary objective of medical robots and tools is to lead the world towards the transition to

3 effective healthcare through the ability to diagnose, treat and perform complex medical procedures on patients (Beasley, 2012). The Al robot differentiates itself from other robots used in the medical field because it is bi-functional whereas other medical robots only are unifunctional. The robot, therefore, markets itself by its uniqueness and by its crucial role in saving patients’ lives. The robot will be useful to all hospitals across the world, and particularly those in developing countries which lack sufficient equipment and at times, medical expertise, to perform medical tests on patients. The inventors of the robot are in talks with companies such as GE Healthcare and Siemens Healthineers to mass produce the robot, and sell it to medical institutions at a relatively affordable price.

How The Robot Works 3D Organ Printing The robot plays an instrumental role in organ printing. Medical 3D printing, is also known as bioprinting, and works in the same way as 3D printing only that instead of material such as glass or plastic, layers of biomaterial that may include living cells are used. The required cells such as kidney cells, heart cells, skin cells and so on are harvested from a patient and cultured until there is enough to create the bio-ink that will be loaded into the printer.

To print a body organ, a medical team collects data about that particular organ; it’s exact shape, size, and position in the patient’s body. The medical team will then formulate bionic using the patient's cells so as to ensure the compatibility of the organ with his body, and effectively reducing the chances of rejection. The details of the organ that require printing are entered into the robot and it is connected to a 3D printer to begin the process of organ printing.

4 Traditional printers print text or images in two dimensions, that is, on the horizontal and vertical axis. 3D printing, however, adds depth to the pictures to create a threedimensional object. The first step in creating a 3D object is to develop the design using the robot's modeling software. The robot-generated blueprint is then sent to a specialized 3D printer, and the chosen material such as plastic or glass is loaded into the printer, ready to be heated to allow it to flow from the printer nozzle. As it reads the design, it moves up and down, side to side and forward and back, depositing layers of the material to build up a product that is similar to the blueprint (Lipson, & Kurman, 2013). 3D printing is a form of digital media where a three-dimensional digital model is created through a software and is printed in successive layers. Each layer printed transforms into a solid form, and the consecutive layers adhering together to create a three-dimensional structure of the design. 3D printing has revolutionized healthcare by providing medical solutions to thousands of patients, hence saving, prolonging and improving the quality of human life.

The robot is a crucial invention because it will lead to the growth of the bioprinting market and lead to even more advanced technologies. As the competition for bioprinting equipment will increase, resulting in a reduction in the price of this equipment.

This will, in turn, lead to the reduction of the cost of transplants and other medical procedures that are aided by the bioprinting equipment. It will transform global healthcare by making medical equipment easy to access and cheap. The robot also continues to transform healthcare by enabling the production of artificial body parts, which make it possible for doctors to practice surgery techniques before the actual surgery and therefore improving the chances of success (Upbin, 2013).

5 The major benefit of the robot’s bioprinting is that it preserves human lives. The advancement of bioprinting will have a major impact on patients who require transplants by, firstly eliminating the need for a donor and hence reducing the time between diagnosis and transplant. This will help save and prolong the lives of patients whose health would have continued to deteriorate as they waited to get a matching organ from a donor. Secondly, the 3D organ that is produced is created from the patient's cells, therefore enhancing the compatibility and success of the transplant. The rejection rate of organs from a different donor is usually high. Additionally, the robot will make this medical intervention accessible to most people since the inventors have ensured that the price of the robot is affordable. Previously bioprinting was very expensive; hence treatment via this method was only accessible to the more privileged members of society.

Demerits of using Al the Robot for Bioprinting The invention of the robot has been received with concern by some since some people consider the robot to be a tool of cloning the human organs and the human body. There are various ethical concerns regarding the recreation of body organs; some factions of society consider the laboratory production of body organs as unethical because it leads to human enhancement and is also deemed as unnatural. According to them, the scientific development of the human body defies the natural state of its creation, and is therefore unethical.

Additionally, there are currently insufficient laws governing the use of bioprinting in medicine, therefore this field is susceptible to misuse as there is potential for doctors to create body parts with super human capabilities.

Facilitating Diagnosis

6 Accurate medical diagnosis has medical, social and economic benefits to the individuals and families affected by medical conditions. It leads to improved medical care, eliminates unnecessary medical interventions and helps to avoid spending on treating the wrong disease. Reaching the correct diagnosis at the early stages of a disease is a significant challenge for many healthcare professionals and institutions. Failure to diagnose a condition or late diagnosis may cause the disease to spread and also lead to early mortality. Some diseases are difficult to detect because they are asymptomatic or they present themselves through symptoms that may be difficult to link to the disease. In other cases, there are no clinical tests to aid in diagnosis. Such conditions include certain types of cancers and rare ailments. Al is one of the most significant inventions in healthcare due to its ability to arrive at a diagnosis within six to twelve hours. It is placed on the patient’s body to scan to gather information about scan for any anomalies in its functioning. It contains software that gathers data about each organ in the patient’s body, and scans this information to develop a diagnosis.

The robot also reads blood tests, urine tests and samples of tissue to help the doctor make a diagnosis (Liu, & Wang, 2014). Al is able to diagnose because its inventors created a software that trained it on the symptoms and diagnostic criteria for over one million conditions. Therefore, once it is placed on the human body, its tentacles read the patient’s full biological information and from the list of conditions in its software, it accurately determines the patient’s condition. The robot can also be used for other medical procedures such as assessing a person’s genetic makeup. The robot is more intelligent and has superior disease recognition than any human can possibly have. One of the limitations of the robot, however, is that in some cases, it will reduce the need for human beings in certain medical jobs, hence causing redundancy and fewer employment opportunities. For example, there will be less

7 need for laboratory technicians and pathologists since the robot will be able to perform their duties effectively. The robot will perform the duties that should be assigned to a human being and therefore reduce the need for face to face interaction in hospitals. . Performance Goals At the moment, only several hundred Al robots have been produced by the inventors, and the production capacity is significantly lower than the market demand. In the next one year, the inventors of the robot should work on increasing their funding and developing more advanced production infrastructure in order to enhance their ability to produce enough robots for more hospitals across the world. Increasing the level of production will enable the producers of the robot to achieve higher economies of scale, thus reducing its production costs (Cohn, 2013). Additionally, the inventors of the robot should form partnerships with other robot manufacturers globally to increase the number of robots produced and therefore improve healthcare across the world. In five years, the robot should be available in every hospital, and its features should have been upgraded to ensure that it maintains its ability to provide high quality diagnosis and organ printing Conclusion Al is one of the most advanced medical robot in medical diagnosis. It will change the speed with which doctors diagnose patients and also enable doctors to provide the correct treatment to patients. Diagnosis is one of the most challenging aspects of medicine; the wrong diagnosis affects patients' health adversely since they receive the wrong treatment and sometimes even undergo unnecessary surgeries. Al robot will reduce the time doctors spend on researching illnesses and open up opportunities for other medical research, especially on

8 intervention strategies. This will be of great significance particularly especially in developing countries where there is a higher rate of patient mortality.

9 References Beasley, R. A. (2012). "Medical Robots: Current Systems and Research Directions". Journal of Robotics. 2012: 1–14. doi:10.1155/2012/401613 Cohn, J. (2013). "The Robot Will See You Now". The Atlantic Lipson, H., & Kurman, M. (2013). Fabricated: the new world of 3D printing. Indianapolis: Wiley.

Liu, Q., & Wang, H. (2014). Tissue regeneration: where nano-structure meets biology. New Jersey: World Scientific.

Pham, P. V. (2017). Liver, lung and heart regeneration. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Upbin, B. (2013). "IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare". Forbes.

Retrieved May 9, 2019.