Health informatics

7 ROBOTIC SURGERY

Brian Davies, Professor of Medical Robotics, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, gave a talk on robotic surgery for BCS Health Northern. Phil Paterson reports.

Robotics is part of the study of mechatronics and robotic surgery started about 20 years ago. Although it has come a long way since it is still not widely adopted in the clinical environment. The first medical robot to be described and illustrated by Professor Davies was the Imperial College Probot for prostate surgery, from April 1991. It was experimental and was used by a leading London-based urologist. Early laboratory trials using an industrial robot were described as having eight degrees of freedom, but the safety of robots with multiple ...