5 ms·

I wonder if they’re more expensive though?

arcticbull 4y ago
> The cost of the da Vinci robot was obtained from Intuitive Surgical. This analysis utilized the $1.5 million da Vinci-S robot. The cost of the robot was amortized over 5 years; thus, the robot costs $300,000 per year and the service contract is $112,000 per year. So it adds the cost of one extra surgeon, for the same outcomes, but slower? Here's a list of advantages. [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016020 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016020
- elromulous 4y ago
  So I suspect we're in a stage similar to where early muskets were vs bows. Barely better, possible even worse. But we're on a path that let's us unlock many advancements. i.e. autonomous surgery.
  - sarpeedo 4y ago
    I think we should solve autonomous driving before jumping multiple steps to autonomous surgery. There are many low hanging fruit in the world of automation; automated surgery is not one of them.
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      Autonomous surgery is probably easier to solve than driving, because the patient is lying still. Though you'd still need at least a nurse observing and a surgeon standing by. But you could have only one surgeon as backup for multiple robots in the same hospital.
      - oneoff786 4y ago
        A surgery is a closed task. Driving is an open ended task interacting many actors and novel challenges. It’s probably slow enough that it can visually confirm assumptions with a human operator if need be.I would bet on the autonomous surgeon over the autonomous driver any day.
        RandomLensman 4y ago
        Human anatomy is actually surprisingly variable and there is, of course, trauma - so novel challenges. The task is also not necessarily closed at the start, i.e., target of surgery is established during the procedure and might evolve. So, I'd take the other side of that bet for surgery as a whole.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Guns were pretty much immediately better. They were easy to use, cheap to reload, and you could shoot through armor.
    - elromulous 4y ago
      I'm not sure this is true. Reloading muskets took a long time, no? You had to fumble with pouring the powder, tamping it, putting in the round, possibly also a sabot. "Reloading" a bow takes a second.
      - oneoff786 4y ago
        Bows could shoot faster and further but you would tire out. You also had to be a trained archer vs a random nobody with a gun. Becoming an archer was hard, and arrows were a lot more expensive. 1k longbowmen beat 1k musket bros, but that’s not the comparison that really mattered.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  It's a big marketing driver for centers.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    That was the connection I was thinking it probably had with higher care costs. Expensive, shiny things that don't actually improve outcomes is a good way to bring people through the doors. Like my dentist's LIDAR scanner.
lostapathy 4y ago
Or is there a bias that harder cases end up on robots, so they even “equal outcomes” is a big win for that cohort?

> The cost of the da Vinci robot was obtained from Intuitive Surgical. This analysis utilized the $1.5 million da Vinci-S robot. The cost of the robot was amortized over 5 years; thus, the robot costs $300,000 per year and the service contract is $112,000 per year. So it adds the cost of one extra surgeon, for the same outcomes, but slower? Here's a list of advantages. [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016020 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016020

elromulous 4y ago
So I suspect we're in a stage similar to where early muskets were vs bows. Barely better, possible even worse. But we're on a path that let's us unlock many advancements. i.e. autonomous surgery.
- sarpeedo 4y ago
  I think we should solve autonomous driving before jumping multiple steps to autonomous surgery. There are many low hanging fruit in the world of automation; automated surgery is not one of them.
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    Autonomous surgery is probably easier to solve than driving, because the patient is lying still. Though you'd still need at least a nurse observing and a surgeon standing by. But you could have only one surgeon as backup for multiple robots in the same hospital.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      A surgery is a closed task. Driving is an open ended task interacting many actors and novel challenges. It’s probably slow enough that it can visually confirm assumptions with a human operator if need be.I would bet on the autonomous surgeon over the autonomous driver any day.
      - RandomLensman 4y ago
        Human anatomy is actually surprisingly variable and there is, of course, trauma - so novel challenges. The task is also not necessarily closed at the start, i.e., target of surgery is established during the procedure and might evolve. So, I'd take the other side of that bet for surgery as a whole.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Guns were pretty much immediately better. They were easy to use, cheap to reload, and you could shoot through armor.
  - elromulous 4y ago
    I'm not sure this is true. Reloading muskets took a long time, no? You had to fumble with pouring the powder, tamping it, putting in the round, possibly also a sabot. "Reloading" a bow takes a second.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Bows could shoot faster and further but you would tire out. You also had to be a trained archer vs a random nobody with a gun. Becoming an archer was hard, and arrows were a lot more expensive. 1k longbowmen beat 1k musket bros, but that’s not the comparison that really mattered.
iancmceachern 4y ago
It's a big marketing driver for centers.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  That was the connection I was thinking it probably had with higher care costs. Expensive, shiny things that don't actually improve outcomes is a good way to bring people through the doors. Like my dentist's LIDAR scanner.

lostapathy 4y ago

Or is there a bias that harder cases end up on robots, so they even “equal outcomes” is a big win for that cohort?