ITGS Health Past Paper

In many hospitals around the world, surgeons are performing surgery with the assistance of robots. Robot surgery has been taken a step further with surgeons being able to use remote-controlled robots to perform surgery on patients thousands of miles away (Scheeres 2001).

Source: Google images, www.cooley-dickinson.org/.../north-building/

a) Identify one input and one output device used in robotic surgery. 2 marks

b) Describe one capability and one limitation of the robot when used in surgery. 4 marks

c) Describe two extra features that would be needed for the robot in surgery to be described as an expert system. 4 marks

d) Discuss one economic concern, one reliability concern and one other concern for patients undergoing robotic surgery. Evaluate the significance of these concerns. 10 marks

Answers:

a.)

Input: Joystick to control the movement of the robotic arms

Output: Robotic hand to hold the different tools

b.) Robots are capable of executing operations for very long hours. Unlike humans, robots dont experience fatigue, and this allows the robots to make accurate operations for long hours. A limitation for robots used in surgery is the fact that robots are programmed. Robots dont have brains, and they obviously cannot function like humans. Therefore, if the patient goes through a sudden heart failure during an operation, robots would not be able to react to the sudden life-threatening occurrence.

c.) A feature robots will need in order to be considered a expert system would be the knowledge obtained from the experts. The knowledge contains all the information about the operation and this would make robotic surgery considered as an expert system. Another feature would be an input system that allows surgeons to input the knowledge the robot needs in order to execute the operation throughly and accurately.

d.) The economic concern will be that robotic surgery will require more money than human surgery. Robots can make more precise cuts during surgery and many people believe that robotic surgery is more reliable and efficient. The robots itself are professionaly programmed and are extremely expensive and it is likely that robotic surgery is more expensive than human surgery. The patient may not want to have his/her surgery done by a robot when it is more expensive and still is error prone.

Patients will probably encounter reliability concerns regarding the robot surgery. Although the robot makes precise cuts, there are still possibilities of glitches or breakdowns during the process of the surgery. As mentioned before, a limitation for the robotic surgery is that they dont have the brains like a human, so if the patient experiences sudden heartattacks, the robot would not be able to make the sudden decisions.

Another concern a patient will encounter is a safety issue. Patients may not feel safe from being operated by machines. This is a psychological effect, in which the anxiety level increases when being operated by robots not humans. Though slightly related to the reliability issue, the patient may not trust the robotic surgery, and result in anxiety attacks before the surgery. This may effect the patient during surgery and it may interrupt the whole process of the surgery.