Medical Design Briefs - February 2024 - 19

The
Contribution
of Medical
Robotics
to Human
Wellbeing
I
f you come across someone in the future
who says they have a tiny robot
in their body that they consumed as
a pill that is now helping them cure
a certain disease, don't think they're
kidding. In May 2023, a class of tiny,
self-propelled robots were designed in
the United States that can slip into a human
body and may one day deliver prescribed
drugs to hard-to-reach parts of
the body. The team of developers at the
University of Colorado Boulder aims to
make the robot fully biodegradable one
day, so that it eventually would dissolve
in the body.
The future of medical robotics is here
to stay and grow with the advancements
in medical science. The global demand
for robotics in the medical sector is
growing rapidly owing to its benefits and
is set to cross market size of $17.5 billion
by 2026.1
Medical robotics encompasses a wide
range of applications, the most common
of which include surgical robots, medication
delivery robots, patient monitoring
robots, rehabilitation robots, and
diagnostic robots, etc. According to
the International Federation of Robotics
(IFR), by 2022, there were around
15,000 active medical robots working in
different sectors of medicine.
Medical Design Briefs, February 2024
Medical robots are transforming the
healthcare industry by performing tedious
administrative tasks, streamlining
medical supplies, performing critical
surgeries, and even more.
Robots for Minimizing Infections,
Maximizing Safety
More than a million hospital-acquired
infections (HAIs) occur just in the U.S.
healthcare system every year. The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
states that these infections can be so severe
that can also lead to mortality.2
HAIs occur when hospitals can't clean
their spaces with 100 percent sterility.
To disinfect hospitals and other medical
surroundings in less time and with high
accuracy, robots are being used.
One such robot is Xenex Germ-Zapping
Solution. This is an automated robot that
disinfects entire hospital rooms in much
less time using UV rays and is capable of deactivating
99.99 percent of SARS-CoV-2, 95
percent of Clostridium difficile spores (CDS),
and 100 percent of Vancomycin-Resistant
Enterococcus (VRE) in the environment.
In addition to disinfecting surfaces,
hospitals can now track any infections
around with the world's first-ever disinfection
tracking system - Trackmate, which
was launched by Xenex in June 2023.
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Surgical Robots to Improve Patient
Recovery Times
A patient usually takes 5-7days to recover
from a colon surgery, but a robotic
colon surgery allows the patient to shorten
the length of stay in the hospital from
five days to just one or two days. Such improved
recovery times can be attributed
to smaller incisions, greater focus, and
clearer and magnified pictures that are
obtained by surgical robots, like Da Vinci
surgical systems.
This system performs a variety of minimally
invasive surgeries, such as heart
valve replacement, laparoscopic surgeries,
prostate cancer surgeries, and more.
Procedures with da Vinci system are
proven to save time and costs and reduce
probable contamination risks.
According to Intuitive Surgical - the
manufacturer of da Vinci systems, as of
March 2023, there were 7,779 da Vinci
Surgical systems installed across the
globe. Crossing a 12 million mark, da
Vinci procedures rose approximately by
26 percent, compared to the first quarter
of 2022, the group claims.
Other robotic surgical solutions such as
Medtronic's Hugo RAS system, J&J MedTech's
Zimmer Robotic platform, and
Biomet's Rosa robots, etc. are now being
used in different medical surgeries.
19
Aliaksandr Marko/AdobeStock
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Medical Design Briefs - February 2024

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