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Nightmare-Causing Bloodbot Automates Bloodletting
Medical robots are nothing new to us here at the Switched offices. We've covered them before. But those robots haven't terrified us nearly as much as this, the Bloodbot.
The bot's form is a simple mechanical arm, equipped with a probe and needle. The probe feels around your arm for flesh that is relatively firm, betraying the presence of a vein. The Bloodbot then sticks you with the needle, waits for the subtle pop indicating a punctured vein, and then ceases its advance before it ruptures your vein (or, worse, your artery on the other side).
In early testing, the Bloodbot has been accurate about 78-percent of the time. That means, of course, that 22-percent of the time it's either needlessly stabbing you, or causing dangerous, uncontrollable bleeding.
Neat as it is, we'll stick with human-controlled syringes, thank you very much. [From: OhGizmo!]
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Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsAngelaSep 16th 2009 9:39AM
Oh. Hell. No.
AngelaSep 16th 2009 9:42AM
Oh. Hell. No. I'd rather face a witch doctor with a sharpened thorn or a third world doctor with a handfull of leeches!
BrianSep 16th 2009 10:36AM
Um. Yes. Please bring this out immediately.
I'm in a medical trial right now. The second day, I had fifteen blood draws. I was stuck (by humans) more than thirty times. A machine that works more then 70% of the time much more preferrable than humans that can't get it right 50% of the time.
(Admittedly, they haven't had nearly this much trouble with anyone-else-on-my-study's veins)
LindaSep 16th 2009 12:50PM
They need more than just firmness of skin to determine venous access. If the machine had a built-in ultrasound that could differentiate between arterial and venous access, and a computer to determine depth of puncture, it might work. Sorry about the clinical trial guy, you must have lousy veins. I do clinical trials, and if you don't have good veins, it's pretty painful.
HunterSep 18th 2009 11:14AM
Hopefully the real version will look less like some sort of weird torture device!
The prototype is currently on display at the Hunterian Museum in London as part of an exhibition on Medical Robots.
There's some more really good stuff in there like some of those tiny miny-bots that you keep hearing about in the papers. Imagine one of them crawling or swimming around inside you!
Check it out here: http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/exhibitions/sci-fi-surgery