My robot surgeon: The past, present and future of surgical bots

About one month ago, the headlines flashed, 'Gujarat doctor makes history', crediting cardiac surgeon Dr Tejas Patel with conducting the world's first telerobotic surgery on a patient in Ahmedabad. Sitting 32 kilometres away from his patient, a middle-aged woman with a blocked artery at Apex Hospital, Dr Patel guided the robotic arms through a joystick to perform the coronary intervention. The surgery sounded rumblings of a shift in healthcare. Is robotics the way to go? When the trauma caused by incisions in traditional open surgeries started becoming a point of concern, laparoscopic surgeries started becoming popular, in the '90s.