Surgeons at Al Qassimi hospital in Sharjah are performing faster more effective heart operations with a little help from Da Vinci
The idea of robots helping us perform daily tasks faster and better has long been a staple of sci-fi films. Yet, with each step forward in robotics, this big screen fiction could fast become reality and the healthcare sector is not immune to such advances.
In the UAE, simple robots already do some everyday tasks, albeit behind the scenes, such as helping hospital pharmacists store, track and dispense prescriptions.
Now though, more complex robots have moved from hospital corridor to operating theatre, taking an ever more central role in keeping us healthy. In June last year, the Al Qassimi hospital in Sharjah, one of the UAE's northern emirates, installed the American-developed da Vinci Surgical System – a robot designed to do keyhole surgery.
Costing AED13m ($3.5m), the robot makes small incisions of 5mm through which it inserts miniaturized surgical instruments. The surgeon controls and guides the instruments remotely, some 5m away from the patient, via a high-definition 3D camera. The minimally invasive surgery typically takes around four hours and reduces the chances of infection, improves the accuracy of the surgeon's movements and means the patient can leave hospital just three or four days after the operation.
"Surgery is much easier. The operation is just as fast as normal surgery and the big difference is that the patient can recover [quicker]," says Claus Risager, partner at Blue Ocean Robotics, which supplies robots to the UAE's health sector. "And, of course, the hospital saves a lot of money by not having patients in beds."
"A lot of these robots also have really good quality effects on the patients and improve staff work conditions," adds Risager.
The da Vinci robot was first used at Al Qassimi in June 2014. Since then it has performed 13 coronary artery bypass and valve repair surgeries. In November last year the robot performed its first operation for coronary heart disease on a 62-year-old Emirati patient. The surgery cost around AED110,000 ($30,000), Dr Arif Al Nouriani, CEO of Al Qassimi Hospital, said at the time.
"All the leading hospitals [in the world] use the da Vinci surgical robot," observes Risager. "There are a few European and US hospitals that have implemented robot systems. The best of the UAE hospitals are at a very good level and they have the right attitude [towards the adoption of robots]."