For decades, pioneers like the University of Maastricht’s Department of Medicine and several others around the world have been using simulation patients (professional actors simulating illnesses and patient behavior) to train medicine students. The future might bring yet another alternative however.

Not only highly detailed, immersive computer simulations, but also robots are changing the field of medical simulation-based learning. Lifelike robot patients such as the one in use at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Redwood City (USA) are programmed to display a range of symptoms, breathe, talk, groan, maintain a pulse and even urinate.

Also in other medical fields the trend is catching on. Japanese dentists are about to be trained by means of a humanoid robot patient able to listen to instruction, to frown, to say ‘ouch’ or ‘it hurts’ when the dental drill hits a nerve or the patient is uncomfortable. (thanks to Kristof for letting us know)

Image by AFP for Yahoo News

Related posts:

1. open medicine
2. humans & robots: side by side
3. pharma lagging behind

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 13:48 and is filed under business, future, society, technology, trends, visions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.