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Cobots are a seamless way to reduce or even remove this possibility of contamination. They can perform packaging tasks that involve a fully sterile atmosphere. One healthcare company uses cobots to load sterile trays into a heat-sealing system.
FREMONT, CA: Many modern healthcare robots are specifically developed for their targeted applications. In other industries such as construction, general-purpose robots are far more common. Collaborative robots (cobots) may be considered to be too imprecise for such a special
ized environment as medicine. However, there are almost always a few tasks in any company that can be accomplished by a cobot.
Recently, there have been a few real cobot applications beginning to mark the healthcare sector. Here are three of them:
1. Medical Device Packaging
The packaging is the ideal application for collaborative robots. Medical devices present some tricky problems for packaging robots. For instance, sterilization is important for devices that come into contact with humans. When humans conduct such packaging functions, there is a high risk of contamination that would jeopardize the items' quality. Cobots are a seamless way to reduce or even remove this possibility of contamination. They can perform packaging tasks that involve a fully sterile atmosphere. One healthcare company uses cobots to load sterile trays into a heat-sealing system.
2. Lab Automation
Lab automation is another robotic application that has clear health benefits. A substantial number of experiments are carried out every day in medical laboratories around the world. One medical journal reported that more than 277 million blood tests were requested in the UK alone in 2014.
These tests involve a lot of repeated action, which sounds like a good cobot automation nominee. One hospital lab was inundated with blood samples and expected to run 3,000 tests a day. The team added two UR robots to their operation, helping them to achieve some incredible productivity gains. While their workload was increased by 20 percent, they could still conduct 90 percent of their tests within one hour.
3. Neurosurgery
Cobots are also being used for more surprising applications. One company has developed a cobot-based neurosurgery product using Universal Robots (UR). The cobot does not perform the actual surgery on its own. Instead, the cobot is used to position the digital microscope, enabling the neurosurgeon to get the best view of the procedure and improve its accuracy. If the surgeon needs to move the microscope during the operation, they can either physically move the robot or guide it to move through the software interface.
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