Cobots Transforming Healthcare Industry Through Human-Robot Collaboration
The healthcare sector in India is booming by the passing day, and according to a report of India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), it is expected to reach USD 372 Million by 2022. Even though the country teems with world-class doctors, surgeons and practitioners, there is only one doctor for every 1,457 people (as per 2019 data from the Government of India) in the country with a population of approximately 1,350,000,000 people (according to a 2019 United Nations study). This, coupled with higher investments in technological advancements in this traditionally non-automated environment, has led to collaborative robots - or cobots – venturing into the healthcare industry.
Cobots are advanced robotic arms that were created to safely share the same physical environment as humans. This is a radical shift from traditional robots, which are heavier, cumbersome, and have the potential to harm humans. The advanced safety features and easy deployment of cobots mean that they allow for Human Robot Collaboration, and has led to the doyens of the medical sector experimenting more and more in using collaborative robot technology to implement partial automation to solve common medical challenges. This means that - subject to risk assessment - cobots are the perfect solution to safely assist doctors and medical practitioners in operating rooms and for other applications in the medical industry, thanks to their advanced safety features. Plus, all of this is done without compromising on precision and accuracy.
While surgery is the most debated robotic application in healthcare, it is not the only area to explore. The non-profit, Madurai-based organization Aurolab (a unit of Arvind Eye Care Systems) is no stranger to cobot technology, having deployed eight cobots from Danish pioneer, Universal Robots, to help in Aurolab’s vision to eliminate blindness. The NGO used to first import Intraocular Lenses (IOLs), a vital component in vision restoration, at exorbitant prices, which drove up the prices of their cataract kits. Having the vision to empower women, Aurolab has a largely female staff of high school graduates, so the NGO was looking for a solution that would not only help them decrease costs and increase their manufacturing capabilities but was also safe and easy to use even for those with no prior robot programming experience. This is when they turned to cobots, which now handle the manufacturing of the lenses. Today, with the help of cobots, Aurolab increased the production of IOLs from 150 to 10,000 IOLs per day, and the superior quality has even enabled the NGO to export their lenses to over 130 countries. Additionally, this massive increase in production even led to the organization grew from a staff of 15 to 700, setting a glowing example for the healthcare sector in India.
Lab automation is another huge area for the healthcare industry to explore using cobots. For example, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, was facing a conundrum when there was a 20 per cent increase in the number of blood samples arriving at their lab and wanted to uphold their target of ensuring at least 90 per cent were analyzed within the hour. With two collaborative robots that were safely deployed without any cages and also respond to vision-guided programming, the Danish hospital now handles about 3,000 blood samples a day, or 7-8 tubes per minute.
Cobots are also increasingly used in operating room procedures. While the cobots do not perform the actual surgery themselves, they are used to assist surgeons to maximize the precision of the procedure. Arora Neuroscience Innovation Institute (ANII) in the USA is one of the first known users of collaborative robots in the operating room, with an optical robotic system used in neurosurgery to help identify exactly where the brain tumour is located so the surgeon can remove it. The cobots enable surgeons to even identify deeply-seated tumours – something that would not have been possible even just a few years ago. Canada-based Synaptive Medial is another medical technology
company that has done wonders in using cobots in neurosurgery, especially to execute minimally invasive microsurgeries with an unprecedented level of clarity. Synaptive finds that these surgeries typically take less time than traditional surgeries, and also results in patients needing to stay back in the hospital for fewer recovery days following the procedure.
In a more recent and relatable instance, we can look at the battle against the highly contagious COVID-19 virus, an issue that the entire world is facing today. One can notice that many in the healthcare industry are turning to robots to the rescue. Researchers at a top Chinese educational institute, Tsinghua University, got the idea to use cobot arms to test and treat coronavirus patients remotely to prevent doctors and nurses from getting infected themselves – a major concern for healthcare workers across the globe. While the technology is still undergoing trials, the hope is that the cobots make for a cost-effective yet technologically advanced solution that can help combat this global epidemic.
Cobots, in essence, allow for humans and robots to be interdependent and focus on what each of them does best, safely and with utmost precision. It is easy to see that the use of collaborative robots in the medical industry has already gained quite a bit of traction across the globe. However, India is still at a stage of infancy when it comes to cobots in the healthcare system, although collaborative robots in India have proven their mettle in a range of other industries. Using this niche technology in healthcare will result in massive advantages, including increasing the success rate of operations, boosting the efficiency of the medical industry, assisting healthcare workers perform to the best of their abilities, and decreasing the risk of spreading of contagious diseases, to name a few. For manufacturers in the pharmaceutical sector and other healthcare verticals, cobots will help optimize efficiency on the shop floor, resulting in high quality products that proudly contribute to the Make In India dream.
The IBEF states that healthcare is one of India’s largest sectors, with citizens spending more on their own health, and the country becoming a hotspot for medical tourism. Despite this, however, our country ranked at a lowly 145 out of 195 countries on the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index, according to a 2018 study by the Global Burden of Disease. As one of the world’s fastest growing economies, it is imperative that the country has a strong, advanced healthcare system to complement this growth in a sustainable manner. Collaborative robots are a technology that could have the potential to revolutionize the entire country’s healthcare landscape, skyrocketing it to compete on a global scale.
