WhyNot?

Scrub nurse

Category: Medicine
Responses: 3 (2 in support, 0 neutral, 1 in opposition)
Number of views: 542
Tracking: Track this idea
Community Rating:Average AverageYour Rating:

I have recently seen a news item about a robot scrub nurse called Penelope which supplies surgical tools to the surgeon during an operation. At present the unit can recognize 12 tools and perhaps it can be made to recognize twice that many. It seems it uses some sort of visual recognition to accomplish this. It seems to me that the range of recognition could be increased extensively by using RFID chips although I offer this idea out of almost total ignorance of the problems involved.

sand, Jan 17 2005

What do you think of this idea or comment?
(You can change your vote at any time)

agree I agree no opinion No opinion disagree I disagree

Users who liked this idea also liked:

Better Brake Light (341 votes) Very strong
Aerial pictures in flight (170 votes) Very strong
Audio-in Jacks in Cars (148 votes) Very strong
GPS and Digital Photos (138 votes) Very strong
Airport charity (127 votes) Very strong
Ending the war on drugs (187 votes) Very strong
Attachment Notation (121 votes) Very strong
like IMDB but for government (84 votes) Very strong
Refrigerator (88 votes) Very strong
Cable TV (89 votes) Very strong

Other ideas in category (Medicine):

Science journal outcomes .mdb (7 votes) Strong
Smokable Bronchodilator (2 votes) Average
Wet beeping hearing aid (1 votes) Average
Doctor Feedback and Comments (3 votes) Average
Effortless Defecation Tube (1 votes) Average
Lactic acid neitralizer (1 votes) Average
Kill all cancer patients (16 votes) Very weak
reverse mortgage your organs (2 votes) Average
ATTENTION DOCTORS! (3 votes) Average
Physicians vs. Physician Assis (4 votes) Average
Scrub nurse (3 votes) Average
Unprofitable medicine. (1 votes) Average
Organ Donations ...Gone Wild (5 votes) Average
Universal blood acceptance (3 votes) Average
Medic over Nurse (7 votes) Weak
HIV for HIV (5 votes) Weak
Asperger syndrome (2 votes) Average
Multiple pills (4 votes) Average
Biological warfare (4 votes) Average
Bird Flu (2 votes) Average
Hospital Membership (4 votes) Average
Eradication of polio (1 votes) Average
organ donation (2 votes) Average
Personal Google (5 votes) Average
Alternative health insurance (4 votes) Average
Humming Heads (2 votes) Average
Health Care Crisis Cure (5 votes) Strong
Sunscreen Never Miss a Spot #2 (1 votes) Average
Sunscreen - Never miss a spot (5 votes) Strong
Integrative Med. (11 votes) Strong
easy-to-take aspirin (5 votes) Strong
standardized computer systems (3 votes) Average
Migraine Headache Cure (1 votes) Average
Dialysis (2 votes) Average
Comments from other members:

Add your comment

This may be a case where simpler is better. Put UPC barcodes on the things and existing technology will recognize more things than the hospital could buy.

Did some reporter actually write this up and marvel that the robot could recognize 12 tools? Maybe the next step is to make a robot to write news copy.

sevans, Jan 18 2005

Take a look at http://www.plyojump.com/hrp.html. If they can dance, writing news copy can't be that far off.

sand, Jan 18 2005

Automatic order-picking machines (not really smart enough to call them robots) already use bar codes.It's just a matter of making the machines a bit smaller, and as far as I know they may already be in use.

Beaugrand, Aug 28 2005

Great, let's pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a robot that can only understand basic commands so that we don't have to hire a nurse. They don't need jobs anyway, I suppose.

EmeraldFalcon, Feb 19 2007