ABSTRACT
Technology is ubiquitous in health care today. Without a doubt, automation and use of robotics will play an ever-increasing role as medicine contin ues to evolve in technological sophistication. Increasingly, automation and use of robotics in the laboratory, such as for blood analysis and cell-sort ing, is commonplace; medical research depends on this technology for genomics, proteinomics, and drug discovery processes. State-of-the-art biotech nology enterprises use robots to feed and manage tissue cultures for growing human skin-the source of tissue used for grafting extensive burn victims. Home health care and long-term disease manage ment (e.g., diabetes, kidney dialysis, etc.) are begin ning to utilize semi-intelligent and automatic drug delivery and monitoring devices. The field of med icine is in the very early stages of applying robotics to health care. Successful robotic application in health care depends on innovative technology and effective integration of this technology into the complex human^machine interactions in the health care environment. Nowhere is human factors (HF) consideration more critical for the success of tech nology application than the use of robotics in the clinical setting. In fact, the use of robotics is more prevalent in surgery than in any other specialty of health care. This chapter reviews the key HF issues in applying robotics to medicine, using minimally invasive surgery as a context for discussion. The discussion of HF issues in surgery is divided into two levels: the human-robot level of interaction, and the team-robot level of interaction.
