• 8/8/2005
  • New York, NY
  • staff
  • Financial Express (www.financialexpress.com)

Gliding into the operating room for the first time to assist a surgeon, Penelope wasn’t nervous. Unlike other novice medical assistants scrubbing in, “she” felt nothing at all. That’s because Penelope is a robot, a machine that recently made medical history by becoming the first to act as an independent surgical aide during an operation.

During a June procedure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital to remove a benign tumor from a patient’s forearm, Penelope responded to voice commands from a surgeon, handing over clamps, forceps and other instruments with her magnetized mechanical arm. Watching with digital cameras, the robot retrieved the instruments when the surgeon placed them down.

Inside her computer brain, artificial intelligence software kept track of the implements to ensure none were misplaced and made predictions about what tool the surgeon would ask for next.

“Penelope is just the first step,” said Dr. Michael Treat, a surgeon, physicist and lifelong robotics fan who founded the company that developed Penelope. “When you’re in the operating room and you’re trying to fight your way through a difficult trauma case, there could be a machine that’s helping you mind the instruments and not lose things and keep track of stuff, kind of watching your tail for you,” Treat said. “That’s a glorious vision.”

It is a vision closing in on reality. Robots are playing an increasing role in surgery and health care across the country. Mobile robots in many hospitals aid patients by filling prescriptions, delivering meals or ferrying blood samples to a lab.

More than a dozen institutions use a robot that allows doctors to make virtual rounds, checking in on patients from their offices and homes through telemedicine, technology that delivers health care at a distance. That robot, made by InTouch Health Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., is topped by a video screen that shows a live image of a doctor’s face. The physician, who controls the robot with a joystick and a special console, can see and hear the patient through a video camera and microphone.

In March, the UCLA Medical Center began testing the robot in its neurosurgery intensive care unit and the Detroit Medical Center deployed 10 of them in six hospitals.

Surgical robots typically fall into two categories.

Machines actively controlled by a surgeon function as tools to enhance human vision or movements for delicate procedures. Such robots have been used on patients with conditions including knee injuries, heart problems and throat cancer.

Then there are robots like Penelope that work on their own, performing some duties of medical professionals.

Will Penelope put nurses out of a job?

“She’s not going to replace. She’s going to enhance the job,” said Doreen Taliaferro, an operating room nurse for 20 years who served as Penelope’s backup during the robot’s first surgery.

While Penelope performed smoothly, Taliaferro was there to take over if anything went wrong and to handle medications and sponges, which are beyond the robot’s current abilities. “This is going to give me more time with my patient and my surgical team,” Taliaferro said.

That is the goal of Penelope, to take over repetitive tasks and free up people for work that requires a human touch, such as interacting with patients and families, Treat said.

The robot also is a reliable counter of surgical equipment and eventually could help prevent items like sponges from accidentally being left inside patients.

“It’s like ’Star Wars,” Treat said. “R2D2 is not replacing Luke Skywalker. R2D2 is kind of a sidekick.”