MedTeck.

SK: Hello, welcome to this interview.

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AT: Hello, I'm glad to be here.
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SK: Okay, let's get started with the questions.
What are the major medical devices and medicines that you encounter and use at the hospital?
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AT: Well, to name the most common ones I use, here’s a few:
Patient monitoring devices (monitors)
NiBP
ECG
Oxygen Saturation Masks
Ventilation
And medicine to provide anesthesia.
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SK: How often do you use medical robots in operations? Would you like to use them more or less?
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AT: Well, in my field, we use no robots, and I believe that medical robots do only make sense if they provide additional skills than the doctor.
But medical robots are usually used in hip prosthesis, brain surgery, heart surgery, and prostate surgery.
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SK: People say that as technology grows, old traditions will die. In hospitals, what do you expect in the future? Are you in favour with it or not?
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AT: In the future, I expect robots to conduct certain surgeries in a remote location where the doctor cannot reach, and basically the prescription area and some surgery areas to be supported by IT, as new technologies become more cost effective over time.
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SK: If any major plague from the past, such as SARS or the Black Death, how long do you think it would take to clear the plague from the world?
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AT: To treat the victims of that plague would be significantly shorter, a cure could be found in months or a few years. But to exterminate the virus from the world, that could take 20 to 30 years, or maybe even more.
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SK: In your opinion, which time period was the most successful in creating medicines?
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AT: Well, I’ll name a decade. To me, I find both the 1960’s and the decades after the Second World War. The amount of knowledge just blasted after WWII.
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SK: In what fields would you like to split the part of humans with the part of robots?
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AT: In the future, I would like to give robots the part of providing certain necessities to the patients and housework in the way of keeping the hospital clean. I would like to give humans a larger part of surgery area, but they can be assisted by robots at certain times, and humans should be given the part of treating the patients and leading a surgery.
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SK: In what ways do you think humans could do better to make it up to robots, and in what ways do you think robots can make it up to humans?
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AT: Robots usually are more precise than humans. If you program a robot to do the same movement 10000 times, it will do it the exact same way 10000 times, without going a millimetre off track. But the human is able to incorporate many factors in a simple operation. Humans are able to incorporate so many different aspects of a certain operation, while the robot can’t think of different aspects of their movements because they were programmed to do only do that motion without any doubt about that motion. Humans think and get a “gut feeling” before and after they do something, making an operation go in a more orderly process. But if you just have to do the very same movement many times in the exact same way, robots are superior to humans. But if you see a tissue, and you think about what medicine would be the best for the patient, the humans are stronger.
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SK: Well, thank you for participating in this interview!
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