Robotic Nation Evidence

Several articles recently on robots and medicine:

1) NANOMEDICINE: It's in your blood. From the article:

John Smith arrives at the doctor’s office with a slight fever, a runny nose and a sore throat; the physician suspects a cold. He inserts a small, handheld device the size of a miniature pocket calculator into the patient’s mouth like a tongue depressor. The built-in molecular assay receptors sense and report the presence of various kinds of bacteria, providing a three-dimensional, color-coded map of Smith’s throat.

Armed with the names of the bacteria, a computer provides programming instructions for billions of nanorobots the doctor has in stock. The finished “prescription” is administered through a spray the patient inhales. The nanorobots move about in Smith’s body—unnoticed by Smith himself—destroying the specified bacteria one by one. Within a few minutes, the pathogen is completely eliminated. Using an acoustic homing device, the doctor guides the nanorobots back into Smith’s mouth and retrieves them.

This scenario, described in nano-researcher Robert A. Freitas Jr.’s article “Say Ah!”, sounds more utopian than it might actually be. By 2020 (only sixteen years from now), scientists say, nanomedicine could become a reality.

2) Spinal repair robot gets FDA nod. From the article:

A miniature robot that helps point surgeons to just the right place for spinal repairs has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, its inventors said.

Called the SpineAssist, the robot was made at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and manufactured by its inventor Moshe Shoham's company, called Mazor Surgical Technologies.

The soft-drink-can-sized device is attached to a patient's body, guiding and positioning tools and implants so that surrounding nerves are not damaged. [See also this post on another specialized surgical robot for prostate surgery - soon there will be a specialized surgical assistant for every type of surgery.]

3) Robot Speeds Embryonic Stem Cell Work. From the article:

Robotic technology has been developed to dramatically speed the process of finding materials upon which to grow embryonic stem cells for use in repairing tissue and developing replacement organs.

The system, developed by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, helps overcome the difficulty of coaxing embryonic stem cells to grow outside the body.

"Until now there has been no quick, easy way to assess how a given material will affect cell behavior," says MIT researcher Robert Langer.

There is so much happening on the medical front -- see also this post on the robotic invasion in hospitals. It simply will not be that long before robots handle all health care.