Looking Ahead: The Future of Robotic Surgery

Abstract

The Safros project on patient safety in robotic surgery was a very successful exploration of the issues related to robotic surgery and their complex interconnections. Clearly, the advancements made in the different research areas lacked an appropriate framework that could enforce the constraints among the different areas and flag the insurgence of hazards in the procedure, as discussed in Chap. 2. We can cite many examples on how an integrated infrastructure enforcing safety constraints can be useful to improve patient safety in robotic surgery. The first example is related to training, or lack thereof, that is known to be a major cause of accidents in robotic procedures. Current surgical robotic technology is not able to recognise whether a surgeon carries out a procedure in a competent way.