ERF Workshop on Safety standardization for medical robotics

Within the frames of the European Robotics Forum, the Topic Group on Standardization organized a workshop on medical robot safety:

"It is the aim to bring experts from research and the standardization community together and define future strategies for the rapidly changing and growing area of medical robotics. The field of medical robots including surgical and rehabilitation robotics is expanding with new market viable products implementing latest scientific results.
The basic safety and essential performance requirements in this domain are referred to two areas:

• on one side we need standards to build safe medical robot systems. This is vital because in the medical, surgical and rehabilitation field the robot is typically in direct contact with the exterior and interior of the human body and applies forces to the patient in different ways. This also implies the need for safe control systems, training issues and many other factors that can influence the overall “safety”.
• on the other side the safety issues have to be weighed by the medical approach considering if the robotics technology is providing at least the same benefit for the patient as the traditional alternatives."

There were four invited talks and then open discussion about key topics, such as necessary clinical evidence, post-market surveillance, missing pieces in standardization, benchmarking and cost-efficiency. The presentations covered some further key points:

• JWG 35 – Medical robots for surgery, Tamás Haidegger, Óbuda University.
• Legal and liability issues in robotics, Andrea Bertolini, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
• JWG 36 – medical robots for rehabilitation, Jan Veneman, Tecnalia.
• Stiff Flop FP7 project, Prof. Kaspar Althoefer, King’s College London. 

More information: on the workshop website.