Wired Science

Doctors May Soon Operate From Miles Away

Never mind RoboCop; the future belongs to RoboDoc. Sophisticated robots are already performing surgery in operating rooms around the world -- and may soon be saving lives on battlefields, underwater and in outer space.

The Da Vinci Robotic Surgical System, a remotely controlled set of surgical tools that helps doctors operate with greater precision and less damage to the patient's body, is in use in hundreds of hospitals globally. But at six feet high and weighing half a ton, it's not exactly portable. That's why the US military is experimenting with “Trauma Pods,” a much smaller version of the Da Vinci that can be carried into war zones. The idea is that a doctor sitting safely miles away will be able to remotely direct the machine to give soldiers medical care within minutes of their being injured - speed that can mean the difference between life and death.

Researchers at the University of Washington are developing their own small remote-controlled surgical system, a 50-pound piece of gear dubbed the Raven, which they hope can someday be used to tele-operate on people in places as distant as Antarctica or even outer space. Last May, the system had a test run 50 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in an aquatic space simulator run by NASA. From 3,000 miles away, surgeons in Seattle successfully ran the Raven through a series of tests such as suturing together pieces of rubber.

But even the Raven is downright huge compared with the Heartlander, a robot "caterpillar" designed by Carnegie Mellon University. The two-inch device can enter a patient's chest through an incision and crawl across the surface of a beating heart like an inchworm to precision-deliver medications, directed by a joystick-wielding doctor. So far, it hasn't been tested on humans, but some lucky pigs have had their hearts warmed by the gizmo.

The technology may be evolving rapidly, but there are plenty of obstacles that could hinder the deployment of such mechanical physicians. The FDA has so far only approved the use of robotic surgical systems when a human doctor is physically near the patient; it has yet to weigh in on the issue of a doctor operating on someone in another state.

Then there's the question of liability insurance. Premiums are already sky high for surgeons; it's a safe bet insurance companies would charge even more to cover potential mistakes doctors could make while operating on a patient hundreds of miles away.

Even the best-tested remote systems are likely to entail some extra risk. Still, if you've got a bullet in your stomach in a bad part of Baghdad, or a ruptured spleen on the Space Station, a long-distance operation probably sounds better than none at all.