Robot-Assisted Surgery

Another innovation that continues to improve is robot-assisted surgery.

Dr. Chad Tracy is a urologist and the Director of Minimally Invasive Surgery and Kidney Stone Treatment at the University of Iowa. Although Tracy did not have a clear role in creating or designing this technology, he works with robotics to perform surgeries like prostatectomies, and treat kidney and bladder cancer. He believes that mimicking the human hand was one of the most difficult parts of the design process.

“Robot-assisted surgery was developed for use in the military for remote surgery, but is not used to any extent for that purpose at this time,” Tracy said. “Hopefully in the future, video enhancements and augmented reality will actually make using the robot better than human eyes and hands can do on their own. We also hope to include enhanced imaging that will allow us to see the blood supply and cancer cells in real time during the surgery. Miniaturization of instruments will allow us to use smaller and smaller incisions and may even let us do surgery through one incision. Our goal is to decrease the morbidity of surgery and improve outcomes. We need to be able to do everything and more with the robotic instrument that we would be able to do with our own hands.”

Tracy said that the technology that goes into robotic-assisted surgery has taken leaps and bounds over a short period of time.

“The evolution of the technology even during my relatively short career has been amazing, as it has spread to multiple disease processes and expanded opportunities for helping patients,” Tracy said. “Every week we perform surgeries that previously would have had more complications, longer recovery, and worse scarring.”

There is a constant debate as to how much technology is too much. In some cases, technology may detract from the quality of human communication or have a detrimental impact on certain segments of the economy. However, technology can also make us more productive and can even save lives.