Your challenge: Create a video pitch to sell a remote surgery system to the Faratron Medical Institute.
What’s the story?
You are the Senior Engineer at Caduceus Medical Systems. This company produces tailor made remote surgery systems for use in hospitals around the world. These systems comprise a surgeon interface, a communications link and a patient interface.
The surgeon interface is a set of special joysticks with a new haptic feedback mechanism. This gives the surgeon the sense of touch during the procedure.
The communications link generally uses technology which is already in place, such as existing broadband connections, fibre optic links etc. This link needs to have a high bandwidth so it can carry a lot of information, it needs to be reliable and it needs to be fast.
The patient interface is a set of four or five computer controlled robot arms equipped with implement holders which can select different pieces of equipment from a specially designed rack. These arms are what actually carry out the procedure, under the control of the surgeon using the surgeon interface.
The exact details of these parts of the system will depend on the requirements of each particular hospital.
The Faratron Medical Institute is interested in your company providing them with a remote surgery system. However, they have come up with some technical questions to which you will need to find technical engineering solutions.
These questions are:
- What happens if the communications link goes down? Is there a secondary back up? If so, what is it?
- What kind of time delays are there on your system and how does this affect the distance at which remote surgery could be performed?
- What happens if there is a power cut at the hospital where the surgery is being carried out?
- What happens if there is a power cut at the remote surgeon’s location while surgery is being carried out?
- What happens if the robot surgeon malfunctions during a procedure?
- What materials are used in the construction of the surgical robot? This is important because we do not want the robot to introduce possibly toxic materials into a patient’s body.
- How does the robot keep clean?
Remote surgery?
Remote surgery has been made possible by the huge advances in communications technology, materials science, computing and robotics that have occurred in the last 10 years.
Teams of engineers, scientists and surgeons have worked together to create precision surgical robots that can be controlled from hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away by specialist surgeons. This potentially means that every hospital with a remote surgery unit has access to the surgical skills of specialists in every medical area.
The field is still very much in its early stages. The first such operation was a gall bladder procedure carried out on a patient in France by a surgeon in New York on 7 th September 2001. Since then there have been more such operations but the main difficulties are:
- Standardising equipment so that the different systems now available are compatible.
- Making sure that the time delays involved are not too long. About 300 ms is taken to be the absolute maximum time delay allowable.
What you need to do
You should at least answer three of the questions posed by the Faratron Medical Institute in a video presentation (max. five minutes). There is no right or wrong way to do this. You can use props, such as diagrams or pictures or just do a talking head presentation. It’s up to you.
Just remember to say which questions you are answering.
Want to make sure you get your point across? Have a look at our Presentation tips.
Want more information? Check out these links…
On this site:
- Watch the Remote operations video.
- Read all about how engineers have made it possible to perform surgery from the other side of the world in
Discover more: long distance cure. - Play Doc Bot to find out more information about telemedicine.
On the internet:
- Brief overview of remote surgery
- Movie clip about development of a robot surgeon for use in space missions
- News article about the benefits of remote/robotic surgery
- Ways of allowing surgeons to ‘feel’ while using a robot to carry out procedures
- Information about the Lindbergh operation
- Developing robot surgery for future moon missions
- News article on the difficulty of producing a sense of touch in remote surgical procedures
How will your entry be judged?
To really impress the judges your entry has to meet three equally weighted criteria:
- Engage! You have to communicate with your audience in an exciting and engaging fashion.
- Understand! You must show that you understand the science behind the challenge and your solution.
- Solve! You need to offer a solution to the problem you have been presented. The more innovative and interesting your approach the better!
Submitting your challenge video
Upload your challenge video now, using the IET Faraday Video Wizard.
Closing date for submitting your entries is the 14th December. Don’t forget to read the terms and conditions before you enter.
If the judges choose your video as one of the 4 regional winners, your winning team will be invited to take part in the filming of 4 ‘Faraday returns’ videos with leading scientists and engineers. Filming will take place in January, please therefore ensure that your team is available during this period.
