Home-grown robotsĪlthough hospitals are keen to use more robots, the market for such technology in China is relatively young, says Miao Li, the co-founder of Cobot, a four-year-old company in Wuhan that makes easy-to-use operating systems for multipurpose service and industrial robots.Īt present, only service robots that do basic jobs such as delivering drugs and food to people are affordable to businesses and hospitals, he says. This year, the hospital intends to expand the use of logistics robots, to reduce the burden on and danger to staff, he says. In 2018, the hospital installed a ROSA robotic surgical assistant for use in neurosurgery and last September acquired a logistics robot, which has been disinfecting isolation wards during the COVID-19 outbreak. That year, 12 other similar systems were installed in the country. In 2015, the hospital purchased a US-made general-surgical system for minimally invasive surgery called da Vinci - a four-armed, chandelier-like apparatus operated by a surgeon through a computer console. The outbreak of COVID-19 has prompted hospitals to speed up the clinical application of robotic technology, he adds. For example, during surgery for gastric or colorectal cancer, the robotic system helps surgeons to see small lymphatic vessels, veins and nerves that need to be protected, Hu says. The aims were to give patients the benefits of minimally invasive surgery and to reduce some of the heavy workload on staff. Credit: GettyĪccording to Jian-Kun Hu, director of surgery at the West China Hospital of Sichuan University in Chengdu, one of China’s most prestigious medical centres, his hospital began planning the introduction of robotic technology in 2012. The streets of Wuhan in China are deserted during lockdown because of COVID-19, which has spurred efforts to use robots in hospitals. Evidence shows that increased living standards have sparked a demand for health-care services, and that the country’s rapidly ageing population will place more demands on the system in the future ( Q. In 2017, China had 2 doctors per 1,000 members of its population, whereas the average in countries that are part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was 3.5. The country currently has a shortage of health-care workers. “China’s need for skilled clinical staff in areas such as health care has contributed to the government’s focus on the robotics industry to help care for citizens in the future,” he says. The use of robots in the medical sector, to help in areas such as nursing, physical rehabilitation and surgery, has been a particular priority, says Yao Li, a biomedical and robotics engineer at Stanford Robotics Laboratory in California and founder of Borns Medical Robotics, based in Chengdu, China, and Silicon Valley, California. The idea was to make them capable of performing a range of crucial social functions, from firefighting to minimally invasive surgery. This gear change in the use of robotics began in 2012, when China’s five-year economic plan, published as a statement of intent by the central government, made it clear that service robots would become a key technology. Part of Nature Spotlight on medical robotics in China “In the United Kingdom, I would have classed that kind of robot activity as a novelty, but in China it’s gradually becoming less unusual,” says Yang, who moved to Shanghai last year after working as director of the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery at Imperial College London for 12 years. “I ordered the food from the restaurant by phone, it was delivered and the robot brought it to my room and rang my phone, so I could open the door and take the food,” he explains. “I was staying in a hotel under quarantine and had my takeaway food delivered by a white, cylindrical robot on wheels with a screen on top and a digitally lockable hatch for food placed inside,” says Guang-Zhong Yang, founding dean of the Institute of Medical Robotics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University - China’s first academic establishment dedicated to the study of medical robotics, which opened in 2019. Service robots were used in hospitals and publicly shared spaces to clean, take temperatures and deliver food, to minimize contact between people as part of the fight against the coronavirus. In the first few months of 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, where 84,000 people have been infected and 4,600 have died, revealed the country’s willingness and readiness to deploy robotic technology as part of a medical emergency. A patrol robot is used to monitor people’s temperatures and disinfect wards at a hospital in Shenyang, China.
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