Medical robotics refers to an interdisciplinary field that centered around the invention and development of electromechanical devices for clinical use. When medical robotics is introduced in the early 1990s, the robots are used mainly to assist doctors and nurses routine task. In the recent years, the use of robots in medical field had increased due to the advancement of technology. There are various types of medical robots in healthcare and can be classified based on their clinical use.
In general, the clinical use of medical robots can be divided into the following.
1. Medical robots that assist doctors and surgeons. Examples are nurse robots, surgical robots, telemedicine robots, radiologist robots
2. Medical robots that assist people. Examples are nurse robots, rehabilitation robots.
Robot nurses work similarly to human nurses. They helps doctors and other healthcare workers in various roles such as preparing surgical instruments or surgical tables and nursing elderly patients.
The most significant use of surgical robots is to assist surgical procedures typically those of minimally invasive surgery. Surgical robots are able to manipulate surgical instrument with better accuracy and precision which results in a more successful surgery with less incision cut.
Telemedicine robots are robots equipped with audiovisual devices. These robots are useful in remote areas where medical helps are hardly available as it provides real-time remote patient assistance.
The use of radiologist robots helps eliminates safety issues due to the use of radioactive substances in radiotherapy and medical imaging.
Rehabilitation robots are robots that are helpful in assisting disable patients from accident or stroke in their rehabilitation. It also can be used to help elderly people with their movement. Several examples of functions of rehabilitation robots are to help in locomotion, promote functional reorganisation compensation and regeneration of the nervous system.
Other robots that are used in healthcare include cleaner robots, serving robots, receptionists robots and this list is believed to be longer as years to come. Moreover, the Covid-19 Pandemic had shown the crucial need to use robots in healthcare. Nevertheless, medical robotics is one of the most promising field in the future and should be considered as important like other transformation and integration of technologies.
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