Medical robotics in China: the rise of technology in three charts
A da Vinci surgical robot system performs heart surgery in 2017 at a hospital in Hefei, China.Credit: Shutterstock In 2006, China highlighted the importance of robotics in its 15-year plan for science and technology. In 2011, the central government fleshed out these ambitions in its 12th five-year plan, specifying that robots should be used to support society in a wide range of roles, from helping emergency services during natural disasters and firefighting, to performing complex surgery and aiding in medical rehabilitation. Guang-Zhong Yang, head of the Institute of Medical Robotics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, says that China's robotics research output has been growing steadily for two decades, driven by three major factors: "The clinical utilization of robotics; increased funding levels driven by national planning needs; and advances in engineering in areas such as precision mechatronics, medical imaging, artificial intelligence and new materials for making robots." Yang points out that funding levels for medical robotics from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Science and Technology began to increase more sharply in 2011 compared to the previous decade. The accompanying rises in research output are closely related to the introduction of specialized robotics equipment in medical-research facilities, says Yao Li, a research scientist at Stanford Robotics Laboratory in California and founder of the company Borns Medical Robotics, based in both Chengdu, China, and Silicon Valley, California.
Jun-24-2020, 13:15:33 GMT
- AI-Alerts:
- 2020 > 2020-06 > AAAI AI-Alert for Jun 30, 2020 (1.00)
- Country:
- Asia > China (1.00)
- North America > United States
- California (0.80)
- Industry:
- Health & Medicine
- Health Care Technology (1.00)
- Surgery (0.74)
- Health & Medicine
- Technology:
- Information Technology > Artificial Intelligence > Robots (1.00)