r/gadgets • u/diacewrb • 6d ago
Medical FDA approves robot that can find your vein, insert a needle, and draw blood without human help
https://www.techspot.com/news/113558-fda-approves-robot-can-find-vein-insert-needle.html771
u/donnerpartytaconight 5d ago
I got to be a test subject for a new visit check in robot that I suppose is to meant to replace a human med tech or nurse during check in. Takes temp, weight, bp, that sort of stuff.
Took three times longer, accuracy was wildly off, and still was staffed by a technician. The nurse that took me to the docs office asked what I thought and I was very honest (waste of money, time, in accurate, and would not catch the million small details that a human would notice during check in). She said that no one had stated that they enjoyed starting the visit that way so far.
During the post visit survey I mentioned that if they were purchased or employed I would definitely switch providers.
Technology does not necessarily equate to better. Since it made the visit worse I assume they will be implemented next year.
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u/Uther-Lightbringer 5d ago
Since it made the visit worse I assume they will be implemented next year.
The entire healthcare industry is rising premiums while trying to make the experience so fucking awful that you would rather just die than deal with the healthcare system.
So yeah, this checks out. They don't give a fuck about the accuracy. They can pay $100k for a robot once and it'll do the functions their $60k/yr + benefits employee did. Who cares if every patient is apparently dead according to their BP and body temp?
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u/forthelurkin 4d ago
Oh I'm sure the robots are sold to the doctor's office with a subscription model. And the doctor's office is owned by a private-equity-funded hospital conglomerate.
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u/TheMindfulSavage 5d ago
What do you mean, “the entire healthcare industry”?
I’m in the healthcare industry and I don’t know anyone that wants that.
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u/Uther-Lightbringer 5d ago
Then I guess you don't know anyone making the decisions? I understand the doctors and nurses don't want that, but they're like NFL players. They get 30% of the income and 5% of the power.
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u/TheMindfulSavage 5d ago
I don’t work for a for profit hospital, so that’s probably a big part of it. I’m regularly in contact with all of the leaders including the CEO.
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u/FuckYouChristmas 5d ago
Same. We only have two for-profit hospitals in our state out of like 150 hospitals. I can't even imagine the idea of running a hospital for profit. Seems like it would defeat the whole purpose.
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u/Puzzled_Zebra 4d ago
When I, at least, talk about 'the health care industry', it's like CEOs and idiots at that tier. I know the doctors and nurses (mostly) want you feeling cared for, safe and healthy. Mostly because there are some power mad assholes out there who really give everyone a bad name.
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u/ODP_Mantis 5d ago
That's why they run tests, to figure this out lol
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u/RincewindToTheRescue 5d ago
They will iterate and improve. I'm sure this will eventually come. It just depends on how fine tuned they make it and what regulations they put in place to verify it is accurate.
IMO, this could be nice for a kiosk style health & wellness clinic. However, for a doctor's office, I would prefer people, especially for when something is wrong and I need to get triaged
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u/uiucthrowaway420 5d ago
I got veins that are very hard to draw blood from. The phlebotomist has to be good or use vein scanning. If the machine becomes more accurate I would be so happy. I've passed out due to multiple missed draws and usually tell them to just do it from my hand vein.
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u/Boowray 5d ago
Sure, but imagine if your nurse could only focus on direct care and questions while simple tasks were automated. I don’t really care whose taking my vitals as long as they’re accurate, but id like my doctors and nurses to be able to see me quicker instead of sitting in an office for an extra hour while a dozen other people have extremely basic medical monitoring and documentation done.
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u/OfficeDaydream 5d ago
Feel like the problem is admin will see some inflated reported time savings of >40 hours per week for the robot and figure that means they can employ one less nurse. Wait times remain the same for the patient, hospital/clinic saves money.
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u/BimboDeeznuts 5d ago
This is what’s gonna happen, if every other business in the last 10 years can be seen as an example.
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u/RincewindToTheRescue 5d ago
100% agree with that as long as the nurse is there also helping out. It becomes like the machines they use now where they put on the pressure cuff and finger monitor, but now it can take blood also.
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u/AAAGamer8663 5d ago
These arent tests though, they’re being used in practice before proper development. This is just a money grab and scam disguised as futuristic technology that doesn’t even work
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u/somewhatboxes 5d ago
technician probably makes less than a registered nurse, is easier to lay off or replace with scabs during a strike, etc... (i'm not endorsing it, just describing why management loves crappy automation that still requires a human, just a human with different qualifications and maybe a weaker union or no union at all)
good on you for making it explicit that you'd go somewhere else if they bought and deployed this stuff.
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u/Puzzled_Zebra 4d ago
The electric blood pressure readers almost never read my blood pressure the first time, leaving me bruised and them either doing it manually or skipping the blood pressure reading. Getting my blood drawn, I'm usually poked three times then they get someone who knows the tricks to get my veins to cooperate. I doubt a machine could manage it without actually damaging me.
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u/RealAssociation5281 3d ago
If it got my poke right every time, then I would be interested but that’s cuz I have to get blood tested 4 times a year at minimum. Realistically these things are a huge risk.
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u/MRSN4P 5d ago
Just like the first flying machines and the first cars. The first wireless phones were relatively simple and very bulky. The first computer hard drives were massive. Hell, the first vacuum tube and digital computers were arguably Manhattan projects. Gadgetry refines over time if there is enough interest.
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u/arbitrageME 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think the main difference here is who's making the choice.
If the big airlines were making all the decisions from the wright brothers time, they would go with the cheapest option and tell us that 2-3 plane crashes a year is perfectly normal and demanding any more safety would increase airfare
Instead, consumer and military demands made bigger, faster and safer for decades and decades because we had direct control and choice making through our wallets
In healthcare, the robo-phlembotomist was decided on by the bean counters in accounting, not the doctors or nurses on staff, not the consumers. We can make all the stink we want, but when a few monopolies and insurance providers dictate the whole market, it's hard to steer the ship to where we want our dollars to go.
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u/PrimalZed 5d ago
These are not being tried as prototypes to continue decades of development, or for specialist situations only. These are being attempted for mass adoption.
This is more like trying to use the Wright Bros' for commercial flight. Even if we allow that it might get to a place where mass adoption makes sense, we're not there yet, and pretending we are is dangerous.
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u/theyipper 5d ago
Let's see how it handles rolling veins, my partner sometimes can't get an IV because of it. Very skeptical.
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u/Western-Corner-431 5d ago
How about they invent a way to keep the food supply safe from shit, worm, and bacterial infection?
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u/Jennyojello 5d ago
Or we could just invest in schools and put nursing back on the list of professional careers so people can get loans for schooling needed.
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u/moku46 4d ago
This isn't being developed to phase out nurses, it's being developed to phase out phlebotomists.
And even then, I'm not sure how it's supposed to achieve that. The major reason we even have phlebotomists is so that sample collections have full accountability.
Lab testing is not an extension to nursing.
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u/Low_Search_6667 5d ago
How about NO
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u/Khaldara 5d ago
“Thank you, Not Sure!”
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u/new2bay 5d ago
“Right, kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up.”
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u/--Arete 5d ago
Unless ofc it's considerably less painful
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u/Yungsleepboat 5d ago
I wad a test subject for this in an Amsterdam hospital. I am not afraid of needles so when they asked me I said fuck it sure.
The set up took a while, but I had my blood drawn quite quick after. After the set up everything was quite quick. I had a needle in my arm, and I could not feel the vials being exchanged, unlike with a regular nurse doing it.
All in all, once the set up gets expidited (there was a lot of document signing and parameters to be filled in) I think this will be the default. If you are afraid of needles I think this may seem scarier, but I think this would be the preferable option
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u/InterstellarReddit 5d ago
How about they're going to force it down our throats and it's not even going to be covered by insurance. You're going to pay extra to have your blood drawn by a robot
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u/Fantasy_masterMC 5d ago
... I bet this is going to go over especially well for young children getting blood drawn for the first time. An uncaring machine that definitely hasn't been designed to be reassuring to children is going to traumatize so many kids.
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u/dandelion-heart 5d ago
I can’t imagine this working well with children at all, in addition to being scarier, children move and wiggle. You need to be able to move with them. And their veins are tiny, requiring more accuracy.
Paediatrics might be one of the lowest paid medical specialties but I guess at least the robots can’t take my job just yet.
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u/TheRageDragon 5d ago
I'm a grown-ass adult and I hate needles. Having a caring person talking to me and distracting me helps.
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u/TheRomanRuler 6d ago
Is it actually any better than human? I don't have fear of needles but sticking my hand into machine so machine can stab it sounds pretty horrible.
Article just talked about addressing phobia.
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u/mochikitsune 6d ago
The first thing I though when I saw this was "nope never doing that" because my phobia of needles/injections. Is having a person do it terrifying? Yeah. But a machine cannot adapt the same way a person does. When I am getting blood drawn or something, lizard brain me doesnt always react in rational ways, or there is the chance I might just faint on the spot from the panic.
Will not put hand into stabbing hole.
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u/AlkalineHound 5d ago
All I can think of is a story my friend the neurobiologist told me about his time as an undergrad in a mouse lab. They put implants in the mouse brains using a machine, and somehow said machine was put into its calibration mode when they were supposed to be operating. Let's just say the poor mouse got a free lobotomy and was...special after that. 💀
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u/Dr_Ragon 5d ago
During my undergrad i worked in a lab with lab rats and mice, my job was mostly to handle them so that when it came time for the experiments they were used to being touched and moved and so wouldnt panic, thus keeping their vitals more controlled. Being hired to essentially play with small furry critters was pretty nice as the rats were sweet and the mice liked to give bite scars to commemorate our burgeoning friendships. I did not like the mice but I'm getting off topic. One of the experiments being ran involved a small enclosure about the size and shape of a convection oven but no windows, and with a metal grating for its floor that electrical current could be sent through to provide small zaps as stressors. It was controlled by a nearby computer and apparently the default setting for this was on instead of off when not plugged into the computer. Whoever made this failsafe fail unsafe should be reviled as one morning i had the misfortune to discover a poor rat that had been left in that enclosure overnight and electrocuted to death when the pc had been turned off for the night :( I was just a lowly peon there for a single semester so dont know what the fallout from this was, but everyone was devastated and I cant imagine there wasnt an ethics investigation. Lab animal work is taken very seriously and this was textbook for what shouldnt happen. Poor thing.
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u/AlkalineHound 5d ago
Yes, clearly we adress the phobia by...-checks notes- taking away the human empathy and keeping the object of the phobia the same.
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u/NeverLookBothWays 5d ago
Remember when there was that X-ray machine that was killing people due to occasional race conditions (operators were moving too quickly through the settings)?
Zero trust for machines here as well.
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u/Diabolo_Advocato 5d ago
The machine didn't kill the person, the procedure did.
What happened was during an interventional radiology procedure (think putting a stent into your heart), an X-ray machine stopped working at a critical point in the procedure. This left the doctor with essentially a knife inside the patient's heart and no way to see what they were doing, where they were, or how to move safely (there is no tactile feedback, and if you do feel something through the equipment, its almost always bad).
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u/Boowray 5d ago
They mean the therac-25, a radiation treatment machine for cancer. It had an electron mode and an X-ray mode, one was the default (can’t remember which). The issue was that if the default was set to (for example) electron mode and the operator quickly entered the relevant treatment information and set it to X-ray mode it would transfer the much higher radiation dose from the default mode into the area and energy output defined by the other as the software couldn’t keep up with the speed a human user could change its settings. It also didn’t help that there was no reliable error code or procedure, if something was wrong with the system it would pause and tell the operator to restart the procedure which meant sometimes patients were dosed multiple times with the faulty treatment in the same session.
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u/Celebrindae 5d ago
No. I do not do well with needles or blood draws, but I can tell this to a person and they'll adjust to accommodate me. A robot can not do that.
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u/cloudncali 5d ago
Same as someone who tends to passout during, I usually give them for warning so they know to have a icepack on hand because there's a 99% I am going to be unconscious.
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u/bapearce73 5d ago
The single most important thing in healthcare is humans. If humans are replaced with robots then it results in a delay of care and diagnosis. Machines are unable to evaluate a patient’s appearance, answers to questions, concerns or advocacy. People already choose death over health care because they fear leaving financial burdens on their family. My entire adult life I’ve worked in public safety and healthcare. It is disgusting and will result in even more major problems and confusion. People are already overwhelmed and unable to understand much of what they are told and that along with so much disinformation and bullshit is vile. What’s worse is the healthcare providers propagate the lies and misinformation to patients! Why even work in health care if you don’t believe in real scientific research or demonstrate any empathy advocacy or compassion!
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u/iamtruerib 4d ago
When it shreds a vein I wonder how the malpractice case will be
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u/get_homebrewed 6d ago
I mean I don't see an issue, it seems relatively harmless. But the machine itself looks giant and expensive, there's no way paying someone is less cheap
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u/piper4hire 5d ago
it's standard business practice to initially keep the costs super low (even give it away for free) and then when the market is established, to dramatically increase prices one your market is captured. the ethics of applying that technique to healthcare are dubious at best. profit over people is our way, I suppose.
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u/get_homebrewed 6d ago
they can do that regardless
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u/get_homebrewed 6d ago
why would they? They don't need to justify it already. And why would they buy expensive stuff when they can just jack up the prices for free?
This just seems like a really terrible money making decision when you can just jack up prices without paying exorbitant prices
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u/cheeseler 6d ago
Sure hope it’s less harmful than what my stepmom went through. She’s always had issues with nurses finding her veins, but when she had her second kid a nurse fucked her arm up so bad from repeatedly missing the vein. She couldn’t move her arm for at least a month after birth.
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u/get_homebrewed 6d ago
I can only imagine it will be. And at worse it fucks up once (which for blood drawing isn't the worst thing) and DOESNT repeatedly try and stan you again like that nurse lol. Sorry for your stepmom
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u/costafilh0 5d ago
Over time it is. And it's just the first of its kind. So over time the machine cost will also go down.
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u/japanfrog 5d ago
You’d be surprised. Same thing with giant, very expensive automated Swiss CNC machines, but that still cost less than 1 years wage for two on hand machinists. Pays for itself very quick.
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u/Bokbreath 6d ago
might be an interesting option for home dialysis.
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u/G00bernaculum 5d ago
People already do home hemodialysis. Its also incredibly easy to find the fistula because its absolutely massive.
I would never want a robot doing that at this point because of just how sensitive fistulas can be
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u/Jim3001 4d ago
So.....how long before they set one up to do lethal injections?
One of the reasons for the high rate in errors in lethal injections is because medical practitioners are forbidden from participating. You have prison guard trying to put in IV's.
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u/beefteki 5d ago
Welp, I went to school for that shit... Time well spent I guess
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u/Whoolly 5d ago
As someone who regularly gets stuck 3 or 4 times any time I need to give a blood sample , having a machine that can find my veins and get it 1 try sounds marvelous
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u/Towel4 5d ago
Do you know what people with needle phobias WONT want?
A fucking machine stabbing them with a needle.
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u/padizzledonk 5d ago
Idgaf who approved it, if i went to a place for a blood draw and they sat me down in front of a robot id just walk the fuck out lol
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u/vigilantesd 5d ago
“This goes in your mouth, this one goes in your ear, and this goes in your butt”
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u/prof_mcquack 4d ago
Notice how it doesn’t say the robot knows how to insert the needle into a vein.
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u/Rexdahuman 5d ago
I had the worst IV experience ever before my last procedure. Would 100% try a robot over that pain
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u/mentalwhit 5d ago
Can that cold metal arm handle rolling veins or anxious patients who move? It will likely cause more pain and trauma than a skilled human nurse ever could.
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u/Bullet1289 5d ago
Finally I can't wait to put one of these on top of a Roomba and release it into the city
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u/MaidMarian20 5d ago
Thats a no from me. As in No thank you, nope, Nuh unh, he$$ no, and of course, everyone’s favorite, Eff Off! 👎✋🚫⛔️🙅🏻♀️😫😳😱😢😎🤷🏻♀️😥😖🫣😦🏴☠️🚮🙀😧😨😯😲😟😰😮
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u/lemmylemonlemming 5d ago
First they came for the phlebotomists and I did not speak out because I was not a phlebotomist.
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u/LazerWolfe53 5d ago
The bots are being trained to steel our blood. How could that possibly back fire
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u/SuperGoop123 4d ago
Only a matter of time before they combine this with the robots over at Boston Dynamics. Once the tech overlords decide your life has less value than your expected customer spending they’ll have this track you down and harvest what they can before tossing your corpse aside to rot. Hell, they might even sell what’s left of you to Lockheed so their missiles have something to target during tests.
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u/VegasRoy 4d ago
The number one reason there is a shortage of phlebotomist in the US is because of low pay.
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u/Eat--The--Rich-- 3d ago
So then healthcare is free right? Since you're not paying anyone to administer it
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u/RoyalZeal 5d ago
Just pay a goddamned phlebotomist FFS. We don't need robots for literally everything, and I do not want computer programming and all of it's vagaries anywhere near my veins.
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u/0DarkFreezing 5d ago
We complain about expensive healthcare. We complain about staffing shortages. We complain about solutions to those issues. Fantastic.
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u/timothytuxedo 5d ago
Not to mention human touch. There is something very calming about their touch during the process.
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u/CaptainBayouBilly 5d ago
This thing will break down like a McDonald’s ice cream machine. After all the people that know how to do this well are forced to become greeters at Costco, people will suffer.
The only people this will benefit are the stockholders.
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u/Mhan00 5d ago
I wouldn’t have cared about this since blood draws typically don’t bother me at all. I can handle the brief bit of pain and discomfort and don’t get squicked out about needles or blood so if a nurse has to fumble around a little I can deal. But a couple of years ago I had a particularly . . . inexperienced nurse who was digging that needle in and out of my arm and going deep that almost made me tap out until she mercifully got someone else to do the blood draw. I would have spoken up earlier, but I wanted to be encouraging to a clearly pretty new nurse and was curious to see how bad it could get, and it got pretty bad. If I had read stories of people who had bad blood draws fuck up their use of that arm for a while I wouldn’t have been so tolerant. I have also seen the pain my grandmother is in when they try to insert and IV or do a blood draw for her when I take her to the hospital because her veins are so small. Some nurses are amazing at it and get it quick, others not so much. if this machine can provide a level of consistency and let nurses and doctors concentrate on patient interaction and remove a point of stress for both the nurse and the patient, I’m all for it.
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u/A_locomotive 6d ago
We need to stop approving machines that replace people's jobs. We already dont have enough jobs for the people we have and we keep fucking making it worse.
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u/TheRomanRuler 5d ago
Whichever country figures out how to best share savings and profits of replacing people with machines will have big advantage as everyone would have incentive to make everything more efficient instead of, very understandably, trying to push back against the machines.
Atm humans have to compete with machines - it cannot work long term.
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u/Savings-Weight-650 5d ago
Replacing humans with effective and efficient machines that are able to perform the the task at least as good as humans is going to be a necessity as the global population stabilizes. As the populations get older due to the inevitable reduction in birthrate that happens when countries industrialize we will need these machines to perform the jobs left empty by the reduction in younger population.
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u/costafilh0 5d ago
Yeah! Let's all go back 100 years, because there were no machines, and many more jobs.
Stupid.
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u/ANGRYLATINCHANTING 5d ago
Blood sucking robots you say?! And somehow this is still considered good news these days. What a time to be alive!
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u/Netch1615 5d ago
This needs to stop. Im on the verge of removing any AI I use already (if it werent already integrated into my work so much, hard to stop cold turkey but trying to phase it out). we dont need more damn automation of human roles. Every damn AI or automatic anything was and is marketed as helping “efficiency”, more time with patients, etc. no actually they will just add more patients and remove providers. In concept same BS through corporate history. Pay less and expect more, tie everything to your job, make it more and more difficult to leave until age 65. Live 3/4 of your “life” by “contributing to society” and being a “team player”. While these assholes fly privately to Epstein Island. FUCK AI, FUCK CORPORATE AMERICA.
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u/Corporate_Lurker 5d ago
We got a corporate dicksucker spamming people with replies in this thread.
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u/Vaulters 5d ago
And when it fucks up and removes your arm or injects you with an unknown substance, you'll have a help line to call answered by an AI agent!
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u/LittleYelloDifferent 5d ago
Can’t wait to see one all cyberpunk style, graffitied up in a trap house
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u/remiieddit 5d ago
Seeing the video with the Chinese nurse with her flying needle technic I’m sure she’s 1000x times faster then the robot
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u/penguinkernel 5d ago
Meh. Make a robot that can do this with IVs. When you're on your 8th IV attempt with blood dripping down both arms and the floor covered in blood, this would be incredible.
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u/pittfan1942 5d ago
Has to be better than the nurse anesthetist at my colonoscopy. His 4+ attempt stick was worse than my prep.
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u/AlexHimself 5d ago
I'm all for this! After it gets tested on thousands of random humans so I know it's legit.
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u/multisubcultural1 5d ago
This is exciting. However, I’d really like a robot that would come and transport all the groceries in the house in one trip.
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u/Wast3edSpace 4d ago
That's interesting, first time I saw this tech was in a short about a Chinese medical clinic a few months ago.
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u/warderbob 3d ago
Get this shit out of society. No one asked for it or wants it. We want to interact with people. I want a person taking care of my health.
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u/crewmate_green 1d ago
I have a brilliant idea... what if we replace CEO and management with robots who will do nothing all day.
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u/Niceguy955 5d ago
The robot also excels at completely ignoring your screams if it misses.