"Ryan Calo, an assistant professor of law at the University of Washington Law School and co-director of the school’s Tech Policy Lab, has some ideas about that. He’s written papers about the government’s glaring lack of experience when it comes to evaluating new robotic technologies before. Robotic surgery technology is here to stay, and is going to get more advanced. How will regulators respond?
In a conversation with Motherboard, he said, “What will the FDA do when Google and Johnson & Johnson come to it and say, 'Hey we have this autonomous robotic surgeon. It's just like what you already have, it's just that we added some software to it.’ How would the FDA go about evaluating that?”
“I'm not against robot surgery in any way," he added. "What I'm saying is that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you lack expertise, you're not able necessarily to see the way that new technologies differ from what came before.”
Calo has written before about the need for some sort of “Federal Robotics Commission” to do just what he’s describing, making sure the proper steps are taken to ensure robotic tech is used safely and correctly. These surgery platforms aren’t autonomous yet, and before they are we need to understand them better, without scaremongering. For now, Dr. Raman is definitive about their current applications.
“It's as good or as safe as any other surgical procedure. It's not any more dangerous," he said. "Definitely not.""
- Date Published:07/23/2015
- Original Publication:Motherboard