The Journal of mHealth Vol 1 Issue 6 (Dec 2014) | Page 38

Canadian Researchers Create 'Black Box' for Use in Operating Rooms
Continued from page 35

Although autonomous machines have
long been used for targeted purposes
like surgery and tasks such as disarming bombs, artificial intelligence is still
nascent. This means that human dexterity, for instance, is still difficult to reproduce in a computer programme.

"As was the case in Fukushima, the
Ebola crisis in Africa has revealed a significant gap between robot capabilities
and what is needed in the realm of disaster relief and humanitarian assistance,”
Gill Pratt, a roboticist at DARPA, told
the New York Times. “We have a moral
obligation to try and select, adapt and

apply available technology where it can
help, but we must also appreciate the difficulty of the problem.”

As well as the robots themselves there
are contextual challenges: what training will the locals need to operate the
robots? How will batteries be recharged?
Are Internet connections available? Is
the ground hard or muddy? These issues
are in addition to potentially negative
public attitudes towards robots handling
of loved ones or performing undignified
burial practices.

But as the crisis escalates, what was previously unthinkable and/or unworkable

may begin to prove viable and some of
the ideas currently being mooted could
be ready in as little as three months. 

One of these is for a wheeled robot with
two attached sprayers to decontaminate
equipment or areas where the disease
has been found. A prototype has already
been developed by repurposing designs
in existence, according to WPI's Padir.
Reproduced from an article by Innovate UK.
Read the original article online at: https://
connect.innovateuk.org/web/ras-sig/article-view/-/
blogs/could-robot-nurses-help-provide-a-solution-toebola-?p_p_auth=InGXrF7W n

Canadian Researchers Create 'Black
Box' for Use in Operating Rooms
So far, Grantcharov's black box has been tested on about 40
patients undergoing laparoscopic weight-loss surgery.
"At this initial stage, we are analysing surgeries to determine how
many errors occur and which ones actually lead to bad results
for patients," Grantcharov says. Not every error will result in a
patient complication.
Researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto have developed a
“black box” for use in operating rooms, similar to that used in
the airline industry, designed to improve patient safety and outcomes