The New York Times reports about a robotic surgical scrub tech:
“Meet Penelope,” Dr. Treat said, motioning toward a robotic arm poised over a set of surgical tools. “She is one hot little number.”
…
New York-Presbyterian Hospital has agreed to test Penelope in March in the operating room on a simple removal of a benign cyst. If all goes well, Dr. Treat dreams of putting a Penelope in every hospital across the country.
“The robot should be able to do everything a nurse can,” Dr. Treat said. And because she is a computer, he said, she can even do some things better. “Leaving instruments inside patients still happens,” he said. The hope is that Penelope, able to keep track of tools as they come and go, will put an end to that.
An additional article about the system is located at In Vivo, a Columbia University Medical Center’s health sciences magazine.