Is surgery going to be oursourced?

Very, very interesting question. Kudos to you.

Possibly. Definitely cheaper. Probable, even. If programmers could rid latency issues that come about from transmitting real-time instructions to a bot halfway across the globe, I can see that happen.

The REAL fear comes about, however, when humans are able to design machines intelligent and skillful enough to be able to handle such delicate operations themselves, as well as manufacturing, data entry, etc. Soon, the only jobs left will be to maintain said machines and computers. We become slaves to our creations.

Then, two or more are linked together in effort to increase output efficiency, a mistake in the programming causes the conglomeration to reach out and access other networks and poof. A sentient neural network is created and is now out to destroy mankind because we are a threat to the planet.

* realizes he’s typing this on a computer *

…

Well, I for one welcome our new cybernetic overlords.

(Please don’t kill me, laptop)

I gave my prostate to DaVinci a couple of months ago. In fact, my first question to Fluther was if it was better to go DaVinci or Standard Open.

Even though it was “robotic” there was a lot of contact with the doc including:all the meetings and exams leading up to the surgery, the consultations, the digital rectal exams, the biopsy, reviewing lab results and physicals. Even the night before and morning of the surgery we met face-to-face. I selected this surgeon because I had reports from OR nurses that had seen him in action.

I would not trust my life to a stranger with an internet connection half way around the world – and neither should you.

(Doing great by the way.)

The doctor still has to operate the robotic machine.

@photographcrash In my case the doc sat in the same room. I think the point of this question was “What if the surgeon operating the machine was outsourced to India for example and sitting in a call center in Mumbai with a couple of joysticks?” It is possible.
I knew where my surgeon lived before I agreed to have him touch me.

Everything else is being outsourced, so I wouldn’t doubt this. I have heard that bank tellers are outsourced and hotel concierges too. Its just a little machine with an indian talking ):

And we wonder why the economy is so bad.

Seems to me that it takes just as much skill, if not more, to operate a Da Vinci machine. Surgeons still have to know what they are doing. I doubt if the ability to conduct these operations will be given over to a computer for decades, if not centuries.

As to remote operation of the machines—I’m skeptical. You still have to communicate with the other staff in the room—nurses, anesthesiologists and whoever else is in there. If you’re not in the room, I don’t believe you would be able to communicate effectively enough to manage operations like this. And what if the machine was unable to do the job, and you had to go manual? Who would do that?

I think there is the possibility of distance medicine, where people are far from a doctor. However I don’t think we’re going to see distance surgery, and nor do I think we will ever turn medicine completely over to machines. There will always be a human supervisor.

Actually, medical tourism as it is called is becoming more and more common. Folks will fly to India, for example, for surgery because it is much cheaper to have it done there than in the US. In that sense, medical treatment is already being out-sourced.

In addition, there is a very strong trend for groups of surgeons to get together and fund an out-patient surgical clinic where all sorts of procedures are done and then the patients are sent home to recover. There are two reasons for this. The first is that it is monetarily rewarding to the surgeons as they don’t have to forfeit any fees to hospital overhead. The second is that there are no in-patients with infections so the risk of hospital-acquired illness is minimized. Many of these procedures are ones for which a patient might have been hospitalized for several days in the past.

So in a very real sense surgery is already being out-sourced, both to other countries and to facilities other than standard hospitals. I would suspect that as folks began to obtain and learn to run DaVinci machines it will be even greater, whether or not health care is reformed here in the US.

Stand your ground. If you don’t want your surgery outsourced, then refuse to do business with a doc who does. If someone in Bangalore goes “Oops” what is your recourse? Nothing. At least if the surgeon is next to you, you can find him. I really respected my doc and that helped me almost as much as the procedure.

There are some accounting firms that are now outsourcing your income tax. Don’t use them if you want your info to stay in the US. It’s pretty simple. Just ask.

@daloon,
Although the article does not make any mention of it, I would think that it takes less skill to opeeate a da Vinci makchine. It would make sense to magnify the image of the area being operated on. The doctor’s movements would be equal to movement on the magnified image, which would correspond to a much smaller movement by the robot, so much less precision would be requred on the part of the surgeon. The article does mention that small jittery movements are filtered out.

As for communication with statff, there could be additional cameras allowing for the equivalent of face to face communication.

To handle cases where something goes wrong with the machine, the hospital could have someone in house for just that purpose.

I agree with you that completely automated surgery remains in the realm of science fiction, at least for now.

I think a more immediate field of business is remote medical diagnostics. The best X-ray analysis expert for XYZ does not necessarily have to live in your town. Blessings of the digital age.