Autonomous Medical Devices

Happy Monday everyone! Welcome to the Autonomous Platforms of the Future Newsletter, designed to inform you about future game changing products, technologies, and platforms. This week I'll be focusing on highlighting Autonomous medical devices and how they are providing hospitals with effective and efficient solutions to meet the growing patient demand.

With a shortage of doctors within various medical disciplines, hospitals are looking at innovative ways to provide all patients with quick and intelligent responses to their problems. Enter autonomous medical devices, which can allow doctors to see the most critical need patients while providing everyone a quicker response time. I know for myself, I try to avoid going to hospitals, when possible, due to the high wait times even after scheduling appointments. It's great to see hospitals and the medical field utilizing more technology to solve the most pressing patient problems. Let's get into the details.

For those unfamiliar with the medical field, lets start with a definition.

Medical Automation - The controlled operation of a diagnostic or therapeutic process or system by a mechanical or electronic means that augments human capabilities for observation, effort and decision

The rapid rising cost of healthcare paired with the shortage of medical professionals in certain disciplines, provide considerable motivation for the industry to find cost-containment strategies. Some ways that hospitals are using automation to streamline operations are implementing robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) for rule-based and repetitive tasks, improve patient experience, and lower costs. Some examples of this include sending text messages to patients reminding them of upcoming appointments, warning clinicians of known contraindications and interactions for drugs. From patient check-in systems to virtual doctors, automations enhances the efficiency and data management for hospitals.

Not only does automation enhance hospital operations, autonomous solutions are also improving patient care for doctors. These devices include surgical robots, diagnostic AI, telemedicine systems, and wearable health tech.

Below are just a few applications that these devices are currently helping the medical field accomplish with the growing patient demand.

1. Deliveries of equipment and organs for medical emergencies

2. Halting the spread of hospital acquired infections

3. Transportation of patients from hospital bed to bed

4. Surgical robots

5. Rehabilitation after major brain injuries or ligament impairments

6. Safety and disinfection of hospital rooms

7. Social interactions for long term care patients

Medical robots are significantly changing healthcare. They are making time-consuming, manual tasks a thing of the past through automation, which accelerates healthcare research and enables physicians, nurses, and other workers to spend more time with patients. Surgical-assistance robots are helping surgeons in the operating room achieve new levels of speed and precision. Autonomous social robots are even enhancing the patient experience by providing social interaction and monitoring.

Health robotics will continue to evolve alongside advancements in machine learning, data analytics, computer vision, and other technologies. Robots of all types will continue to evolve to complete tasks autonomously, efficiently, and accurately.

Where I see the future of autonomous medical devices are:

• Autonomous ambulance vehicles

• Drone use for delivery of medicine, relief and organs

• Minor autonomous surgeries

• Growth of smart hospitals

• Autonomous medical imaging and vital checks

• Autonomous mobile clinics

From my perspective, the workforce will be impacted to an extent since these autonomous robots will complete some of the tasks that hospital staff are currently doing. Given the current staff shortages that some hospitals are experiencing, this technology will be a welcome innovation that will not only cut costs but also allow them to get critical tasks executed efficiently. I personally love the idea of more smart hospitals because it thoroughly enhances the patient and customer experience with all the technology available. In my mind, more technology utilized would translate to less wait times and quick diagnosis of patients' illnesses.

The only downside I see to this would be to hospitals that don't have the funding to implement these autonomous robots and solutions. If hospitals are currently experiencing issues hiring staff due to the area, then autonomous solutions wouldn't be the solution because the funding required. In that situation, the state assist with funding to bring the hospital to the latest technology advancements. I'll be curious to see where things go as the landscape for future smart cities come to light.

The outlook of autonomous platforms is steadily growing in demand across several industries. The urban city 2.0 infrastructure is slowly starting to advance with autonomous public transportation, driverless cars, urban air mobility, autonomous transport and now smart hospitals. While this will be a big shift for the medical industry that is so reliance on human face to face interactions, the customer and patient demands will supersede how hospitals will operate for the future.

In my opinion, technology advancement provide the disruptive push for drastic changes that ultimately benefit the end users. Having a quicker, more effective, and safer hospital experience is all that patients ask for in the current market. If autonomous technology can provide this, I believe it will be welcomed tremendously given the funding is in place to purchase the technologies.

Thanks for joining me this week. Stay tuned for my next technology talk by subscribing below and sharing with colleagues you think it would benefit.

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