Mint Primer: Your life may be in the hands of an AI surgeon soon
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Having learnt from videos, a da Vinci robot has been replicating surgical procedures like using a needle and suturing. Robots may be a step closer to performing complex surgeries independently—but will humans trust autonomous AI surgeons? Robotic surgeries, especially in the post-covid era, are being routinely done in urology, oncology, nephrology, gynaecology and laproscopy.
But these robots aren’t the kind you see in movies. Da Vinci robots, for instance, come equipped with robotic arms to hold surgical tools, cameras for vision and consoles controlled by human surgeons. They are used in hospitals around the world including local ones like Apollo, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Fortis Hospitals, Max and Medanta.
In fact, India got its first urologic robotic installation at AIIMS in 2006 after US FDA approval. Programming a da Vinci robot for a surgical task typically requires manual coding for each step, which can take long. Researchers from Johns Hopkins and Stanford universities used imitation learning to train the robot to perform three key tasks—manipulating a needle, lifting tissue, and suturing— “in just a couple of days" by watching videos of surgeons.
The method does not need explicit programming, accelerating surgical autonomy. Nearly 7,000 da Vinci robots are being used worldwide, and more than 50,000 surgeons have been trained on the system—a huge database for robots to train on. Read more: CourtGPT: Can you expect a fair trial from AI lawyers and judges? The global market for surgical robots may grow from $11.1 billion this year to $23.7 billion by 2029, says MarketsandMarkets.
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