Itgs Mini Portfolio on Trauma Pod

A Presentation of the issue



Technology is seen as a factor contributing to human well being, improving quality of life, progress against disease, discomfort. But it is also the cause of loss of lives; by enabling the creation of the most dangerous weapons. When dealing with technology we always question ourselves on how reliable or secure the technology is. Yet, we have encountered situations were the developed programs or software worked perfectly despite the amount of questions it raised.

Today we are confronted to robotics. As the military looks for ways to put fewer lives at risks, they have envisioned a machine “Trauma Pod” built into a mobile constituting a robot surgeon that will operate soldiers if needed at the same time controlled by experimented surgeons far from the battlefield. Eventually such IT development demands a costly investment in which the pentagon contributed giving a consortium of $12 million over 2 year preliminary project.   The unmanned device is expected to function in at least 10 or 15 years away. Researchers are still questioning themselves about the manual communication between the surgeons and the robot, which brings us to the major problem raised by this IT development, reliability and security. The initial goal is to create a remote – controlled system that can sew a mannequin’s severed blood vessel back together; a task that requires a lot of manual dexterity. If during the trials the robot fails to succeed then that will be a waste of money.

The robot will enable in the future that medical personnel do not get sent to front lines, which is a good step for life savings but we also have to consider the fact that it will threaten the jobs of nurses and doctors. Moreover, just imagining robotic arms performing a surgery on a soldier’s heart vessel, gives the shivers. What if the information sent by the surgeon from a remote area get altered while the robot performs his actions.



B IT...