The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) can autonomously perform 60 percent of bowel anastomosis on pig intestines. Robots are a growing presence in operating rooms throughout the U.S. as surgeons embrace the technology to help them remove damaged organs or cancerous tissue. These systems have improved greatly in recent years but still need hands-on surgeons to guide their instruments and make critical decisions. Turning a robot loose on its own to cut and sew delicate tissue inside a human body would be a massively complex undertaking requiring advanced imaging, sensor and artificial intelligence technologies--not to mention a lot more acceptance from the medical community and federal regulators. But those hurdles have not stopped scientists at Children's National Medical Center's (CNMC) Sheikh Zayed Institute from developing a robotic system that has successfully sutured and reconnected portions of pig intestine in a living animal with little or no human intervention, according to a report in the May 4 Science Translational Medicine. Soft tissue surgeries like this one, which is called intestinal anastomosis, are especially challenging for robotic systems because the tissue changes shape and moves around during the procedures.

In a small startup space just down the street from UC Berkeley's campus, robotics pioneer Homayoon Kazerooni is bragging about how no-frills his invention is. "We're trying to make the Honda," he says, "not the sportscar." Kazerooni is showing me his latest robotic exoskeleton that gives paraplegics and people with mobility problems the ability to stand up from their wheelchairs and walk again. He's been building such bionic systems for more than a decade, and back in 2005 he cofounded Ekso Bionics, the current market leader for exoskeletons. So it's no surprise that Kazerooni says the new device from his new company, SuitX, is the most advanced yet.

One of the most frustrating elements of the current healthcare environment is the administrative burden of prior authorizations for medications and procedures. It is a frustration for providers, for patients, and for payers. Is there any way to solve this dilemma? For physicians, an estimated 20 hours per week is spent in prior authorization activities, costing an average of 83,000 in excess annual overhead per physician. Is there an actual benefit for this effort? Most physicians say that payers (commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)) use prior authorizations to keep costs down.

Artificial intelligence and concerns over the long term consequences has come up again in the news week in the form of a Scientific American blog musing over how artificial intelligence will evolve -- "Is AI Dangerous? It Depends…" There is a certain amount of hand wringing over AI and, to a lesser extent, its branches such as machine learning and natural language processing. It also drew attention to notables who have voiced concern over AI including Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. The concerns tend to emerge from worst case scenarios and assume that even though AI can be used for beneficial purposes, what if the technology is turned against us? But many people applying AI to make healthcare delivery more efficient and automated don't see it that way.

Food safety is vital to the well-being of society; therefore, it is important to inspect food products to ensure minimal health risks are present. The presence of certain species of insects, especially storage beetles, is a reliable indicator of possible contamination during storage and food processing. However, the current approach of identifying species by visual examination of insect fragments is rather subjective and time-consuming. To aid this inspection process, we have developed in collaboration with FDA food analysts some image analysis-based machine intelligence to achieve species identification with up to 90% accuracy. The current project is a continuation of this development effort. Here we present an image analysis environment that allows practical deployment of the machine intelligence on computers with limited processing power and memory. Using this environment, users can prepare input sets by selecting images for analysis, and inspect these images through the integrated panning and zooming capabilities. After species analysis, the results panel allows the user to compare the analyzed images with reference images of the proposed species. Further additions to this environment should include a log of previously analyzed images, and eventually extend to interaction with a central cloud repository of images through a web-based interface.

Emerald Medical Applications Corp. (OTCQB: MRLA), an Israeli-based company engaged in the development and sale of its proprietary DermaCompare cloud-based, artificial intelligence technology for the early diagnosis of Melanoma/skin cancer, today announced entry into a cooperation agreement with Terem, one of Israel's largest community-based, emergency healthcare providers with 17 medical facilities, serving over 700,000 patients throughout Israel. Starting in April 2016, Emerald will begin to offer its DermaCompare technology at each of Terem's clinics throughout Israel, offering advanced dermatological examinations, diagnosisand treatment led by a leading professional Dermatologists. DermaCompare is Emerald's cloud-based, artificial, intelligence technology using Total Body Photography imaging which is capable of being automatically compared to a patient's previous images to diagnose and detect the presence of Melanoma in its earliest stages. Lior Wayn, Emerald's CEO, stated that "DermaCompare, Emerald's FDA approved, HIPPA compliant software technology, which can be downloaded from any Mac or Android based App store, enables physicians andtheir patients, using virtually any digital camera, including cell phones, iPads, tablets and other similar devices, to take Total Body Photography images and, in real-time, transmit these images for dermatological evaluation and identification of suspicious moles, lesions and other skin conditions. These images are then compared using Emerald's cloud database, as well as the patients previous Total Body Photography images, which will dramatically enhance a physician's ability to detect Melanoma earlier, more accurately and more efficient than other means of diagnosis."

The annual Data Science Bowl hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton and Kaggle is based on the premise that crowdsourced solutions can be used to solve some of our world's most complex problems. This year, the focus was on heart health – an issue of critical importance worldwide. In the U.S. alone, one person is diagnosed with heart disease every 43 seconds. It typically takes 20 minutes to have an MRI analyzed and a diagnosis delivered. However, this year's Bowl managed to create an algorithm that allows your doctor to receive your results and prognosis in real-time.

One of the most frustrating elements of the current healthcare environment is the administrative burden of prior authorizations for medications and procedures. It is a frustration for providers, for patients, and for payers. Is there any way to solve this dilemma? For physicians, an estimated 20 hours per week is spent in prior authorization activities, costing an average of 83,000 in excess annual overhead per physician. Is there an actual benefit for this effort? Most physicians say that payers (commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)) use prior authorizations to keep costs down.

The robots were supposedly coming for our jobs. Not just the blue collar jobs, but also the highly trained and exceptionally well-paid jobs of anesthesiologists. These doctors help patients walk the dangerously thin line between pain-free unconsciousness and death, and for that their services can cost 2,000 per procedure. A robot named Sedasys could do the same job for more like 200 … except that nobody wants to buy it. Several outlets are reporting that Johnson & Johnson will stop selling Sedasys because of poor sales.

A neuro-technology company has received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for a medical device that could detect concussions in less than 60 seconds on the sidelines of playing fields across the nation. EYE-SYNC, a product of SyncThink, is an integrated head-mounted eye-tracking device that analyzes eye movement impairment through the use of virtual reality. Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, neurosurgeon at Stanford University, president of the Brain Trauma Foundation, and SyncThink founder, told FoxNews.com the product is distinct mainly because it does not claim to diagnose a concussion but rather detects disruption in visual information. "All of the other technologies out there say that they're'diagnosing concussion,' but there's no accepted definition, so how are you diagnosing it?" he said. Data released by the National Football League (NFL) in January revealed the rate of concussions in the 2015 season was up nearly 32 percent compared with data from 2014, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that each year nearly 500,000 children are treated for a traumatic brain injury, including concussion.