Longevity science

General Electric is trying to streamline surgical tool care in hospitals by taking humans out of the equation and letting a robot do the dirty work.

An infection occurs in 1 to 3 surgery patients out of a hundred. While efforts are constant to minimize surgical site infections – improved operating room ventilation, improved sterilization methods, the use of antimicrobials – they are still the most common type of healthcare-associated infections, accounting for approximately 31 percent of infections contracted by hospitalized patients.

One of the more promising developments in the field of medical technology involves the use of microspheres for targeted drug delivery. In a nutshell, this encompasses creating tiny hollow balls that are filled with a specific drug, which travel directly to a specific organ or area of diseased tissue. Once there, the spheres release their medication, keeping it concentrated where it’s needed while sparing other tissue from any harmful side effects.

Recently, a team of scientists from Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces devised a new method of manufacturing such microspheres, which is said to offer several advantages over existing techniques.

Presently, when an operation is going to be performed at a hospital, people first locate all the instruments that the surgeon will require, inspect them, arrange them on a tray, sterilize them, and then deliver them to the operating room. According to General Electric’s GE Global Research division, however, robots could do all of those things better. To that end, the group has recently partnered with GE Healthcare and the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, in a US$2.5 million two-year project to develop just such robots.