A prototype robotic scrub nurse?

A fairly far fetched robot was in the news recently: Future Surgeons May Use Robotic Nurse, ‘Gesture Recognition’.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2011) — Surgeons of the future might use a system that recognizes hand gestures as commands to control a robotic scrub nurse or tell a computer to display medical images of the patient during an operation.

Purdue industrial engineering graduate student Mithun Jacob uses a prototype robotic scrub nurse with graduate student Yu-Ting Li. Researchers are developing a system that recognizes hand gestures to control the robot or tell a computer to display medical images of the patient during an operation. (Credit: Purdue University photo/Mark Simons)

For related stories see these posts on:
Robot Gossip: Robot Scrub Nurse
Nursing Advocacy: “The robot should be able to do everything a nurse can,” Dr. Treat said.

I believe, partly based the insightful comments given at Nursing Advocacy, that it is not a good idea to replace human scrub nurses with robotic ones. It would be much better to solve the shortage of nurses). In this case, there is so much a scrub nurse does, so much more than a robot can do, for at least the next fifty years or so.

But there will be a publication in the Communications of the ACM soon. That will be an interesting read

Update: There is already a nice video about the story on the ACM site (here).