You might find this non-technical article on the use of robotics in surgery at Singularity Hub interesting. I think we will see more of this sort of development rather than less unless it’s strangled in the womb.
As I’ve said before there’s a lot more potential for the automation of expensive processes than there is in cheap ones.
Apparently, they have had the ability for shaky handed surgeons for the past ten years. (I wish somebody had told me.) I thought that this would be developed to allow less skilled surgeons to do the less sophisticated operations, and it turns out that it is ten years old. The question is why has it not been implemented?
I would anticipate it being used for the easiest procedures first, and then, it would move up the skill ladder. The top doctors would take the same position everybody has taken for anybody below them who has lost their job, and when it happens to them, we will be treated to the same old song: “I used to think like that. I never thought it could happen to me.” The response will be the same one they used many, many times. It involves bootstraps, hard-work, education and training, moving, and getting off your lazy ass.
Hope the second generation really is better than the first. With the first generation robots we found that we simply couldn’t use them for many procedures. Even for the ones where we do use them it mostly makes cases longer and cost more. We have found a few procedures where with good surgeons, this really is a skill and you can’t just throw in the bad surgeons, it might be faster with less blood loss, but still more expensive. Recovery time is faster since it is port surgery, so that is the big advantage. That plus the optics on these is very good.
I think the key is AI, not robotics per se, though we do need them to be smaller, more usable and cheaper.
Steve