China shows off its first official neurosurgery robot

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By Matthew Griffin Robo Revolution 25th March 2019

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

As the technologies needed to construct sophisticated robot surgeons advances, so too are the type and complexity of surgeries they can take on.

Using robots in surgery isn’t new, and I’ve written about a bunch of them recently as the technology starts leaving the labs and enters the real world – from the Da Vinci robot that took the US by storm, to the US Army’s first tentative trials of remote robot surgeries in the battlefield, and the development of the world’s fastest neurosurgery robot that is fifty times faster than the best human experts, that, unlike its Chinese counterpart, which I’ll get to in a moment, is still in lab trials.

A creative AI designed NASA's next spider-like interplanetary lander

As China faces the prospect of rapidly increasing healthcare demands in the coming decades, in no small part thanks to their rapidly ageing population, the Chinese government are increasingly looking to the technology sector for help in tackling the problem. And that help is coming, thanks to the rapid development of an increasingly impressive array of robotic technologies that just in the past year have seen the country trial the world’s first robot dentist, that implanted to replacement teeth in a patients jaw, and the world’s first remote robot surgery over a superfast 5G network where doctors removed the liver of a lab animal 30 miles away.

Learn about the new robot

Now though, and following quickly on from another world first after the recent Chinese gene editing CRISPR scandal that rocked the world when a Chinese scientist boldly announced he’d created the world’s first designer human twins who were resistant to HIV, Chinese company, Remebot, has unveiled the country’s first official neurosurgery robot.

Called Remebot, after the company that made it, and which you can working see in the video above, today the robot’s being used by doctors to conduct surgeries for one of the most sensitive parts of the body, the human brain, and it’s already proving to be wildly successful after it helped surgeons operate on a patient with a Celebral Hematoma in a procedure that took less than 30 minutes, not the usual five hours it normally takes.

A fully autonomous robot dentist just completed its first human procedure

While Remebot isn’t yet commercially available once it is it it’s highly likely that it’ll become part of China’s growing robotic healthcare revolution, which, when combined with other technologies could see it too being used to operate on patients both in China and much further afield on patients who don’t have easy access to the skilled doctors or surgeons they need. And make no mistake, this is just the tip of the iceberg – as the technologies that support the development of these new Robo-Surgeons mature and improve, from the development of superfast networks to advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Vision they are just going to get better and better, at which point we’ll see the dawn of yet another healthcare revolution.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.