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Since mid-2000s, hospitals have begun implementing radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in order to improve their operations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of RFID technology in improving the traceability of surgical instruments in a hospital environment.

A case study is conducted at a teaching hospital in Montreal, Canada. Business process reengineering approach and simulation techniques are used to assess the realistic potential of the RFID technology. The application of different scenarios and how they influence the efficiency of process flow between the central sterilization department and operating rooms of the hospital is investigated.

Research outcomes demonstrated how tagging individual instruments or their sets lead to reduction of the time spent in re-processing the soiled instrument as well as the reduction of costs related to staff. Furthermore, specific key performance indicators are identified and eventual issues related to implementation of the re-designed processes are discussed.

Implementing RFID-enabled solutions in hospital context is still an emerging phenomenon that involves various stakeholders in a change management project. While implementing RFID technology can benefit hospitals by improving business processes and workflows, the adoption is still slow, especially for managing surgical instruments. It is, hence, crucial to compare the advantages and drawbacks of RFID-enabled surgical instruments solutions with other well-established traceability technologies such as barcoding.

Existing robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) system lacks of force feedback, and it cannot provide the surgeon with interaction forces between the surgical instruments and patient’s tissues. This paper aims to restore force sensation for the RMIS system and evaluate effect of force sensing in a master-slave manner.

This paper presents a four-DOF surgical instrument with modular joints and six-axis force sensing capability and proposes an incremental position mode master–slave control strategy based on separated position and orientation to reflect motion of the end of master manipulator to the end of surgical instrument. Ex-vivo experiments including tissue palpation and blunt dissection are conducted to verify the effect of force sensing for the surgical instrument. An experiment of trajectory tracking is carried out to test precision of the control strategy.

Results of trajectory tracking experiment show that this control strategy can precisely reflect the hand motion of the operator, and the results of the ex-vivo experiments including tissue palpation and blunt dissection illustrate that this surgical instrument can measure the six-axis interaction forces successfully for the RMIS.

This paper addresses the important role of force sensing and force feedback in RMIS, clarifies the feasibility to apply this instrument prototype in RMIS for force sensing and provides technical support of force feedback for further clinical application.

Teleoperated minimally invasive surgical robots can significantly enhance a surgeon's accuracy, dexterity and visualization. However, current commercially available systems do not include significant haptic (force and tactile) feedback to the operator. This paper describes experiments to characterize this problem, as well as several methods to provide haptic feedback in order to improve surgeon's performance. There exist a variety of sensing and control methods that enable haptic feedback, although a number of practical considerations, e.g. cost, complexity and biocompatibility, present significant challenges. The ability of teleoperated robot‐assisted surgical systems to measure and display haptic information leads to a number of additional exciting clinical and scientific opportunities, such as active operator assistance through “virtual fixtures” and the automatic acquisition of tissue properties.

This paper aims to provide an insight into recent advancements and developments of robotics for Natural Orifice Transluminal Surgery (NOTES) procedures.

Following an introduction that highlights the evolution from Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) to NOTES in the medical field, this paper reviews the main robotics systems that have been designed and implemented for MIS and NOTES, summarising their advantages and limitations and remarking the technological challenges and the requirements that still should be addressed and fulfilled.

The state-of-the-art presented in this paper shows that the majority of the platforms created for NOTES are laboratory prototypes, and their performances are still far from being optimal. New solutions are required to solve the problems confronted by the proposed systems such as the limited number of DOFs, the limited resolution, the optimal fixation and stiffening of the instruments for enabling stable and precise operation, the effective transmission of forces to the tip tools, the improvement of the force feedback feeling and the proper visualization and spatial orientation of the surgical field. Advances in robotics can contribute significantly to the development and future implementation of the NOTES procedure.

This paper highlights the current trends and challenges ahead in robotics applied to NOTES procedure.

With the increasing development of the surgical robots, the opto-mechatronic technologies are more potential in the robotics system optimization. The optic signal plays an important role in opto-mechatronic systems. This paper aims to present a review of the research status on fiber-optic-based force and shape sensors in surgical robots.

Advances of fiber-optic-based force and shape sensing techniques in the past 20 years are investigated and summarized according to different surgical requirement and technical characteristics. The research status analysis and development prospects are discussed.

Compared with traditional electrical signal conduction, the phototransduction provides higher speed transmission, lower signal loss and the immunity to electromagnetic interference in robot perception. Most importantly, more and more advanced optic-based sensing technologies are applied to medical robots in the past two decades because the prominence is magnetic resonance imaging compatibility. For medical robots especially, fiber-optic sensing technologies can improve working security, manipulating accuracy and provide force and shape feedback to surgeon.

This is a new perspective. This paper mainly researches the application of optical fiber sensor according to different surgeries which is beneficial to learn the great potential of optical fiber sensor in surgical robots. By enumerating the research progress of medical robots in optimization design, multimode sensing and advanced materials, the development tendency of fiber-optic-based force and shape sensing technologies in surgical robots is prospected.

Robotic systems for laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery (MIS) always end up with highly sophisticated mechanisms and control schemes – making it a long and hard development process with a steep price. This paper aims to propose and realize a new, efficient and convenient strategy for building effective control systems for surgical and even other complex robotic systems.

A novel method that takes advantage of the modularization concept by integrating two middleware technologies (robot operating system and robotic technology middleware) into a common architecture based on the strengths of both was designed and developed.

Tests of the developed control system showed very low time-delay between the master and slave sides; good movement representation on the slave manipulator; and high positional and operational accuracy. Moreover, the new development strategy trial came with much higher efficiency and lower costs.

This method results in a modularized and distributed control system that is amenable to collaboratively develop; convenient to modify and update; componentized and easy to extend; mutually independent among subsystems; and practicable to be running and communicating across multiple operating systems. However, experiments show that surgical training and updates of the robotic system are still required to achieve better proficiency for completing complex minimally invasive surgical operations with the proposed and developed system.

This research proposed and developed a novel modularization design method and a novel architecture for building a distributed teleoperation control system for laparoscopic MIS.

Laparoscopic surgeons suffer because of discomfited body posture while performing surgery and experience discomfort owing to lack of customized surgical instruments. Accordingly, this paper aims to recommend an individual customization strategy by developing an ergonomically designed laparoscopic forceps handle and thereby increase the comfort of surgeons.

Hand anthropometric parameters of 282 south Indian male subjects are used to customize the handle. uPrint and Objet260 Connex, which works based on fused deposition modeling and PolyJet, respectively, are used to fabricate the prototype of the handle. Design modifications include a pistol-type grip, the increased contact area between the hand and handle, and neutral wrist posture.

Ergonomic evaluation parameters such as grip, functionality, comfort and wrist posture using subjective ratings from laparoscopic surgeons were recorded and obtained average values of 4.1, 3.6, 4.1 and 4.1, respectively, based on a five-point ordinal scale. Additionally, stress analysis also confirms the safety of the handle based on von Mises stress criteria.

Anthropometric data are limited to 282 subjects and subjective evaluation is conducted using a prototype, not the end-use product.

Evaluation using subjective rating confirms the ascendancy of a modified handle over the existing handle in terms of assessed parameters. The proposed individual customization strategy can be applied for other industrial hand tools to enhance comfort.

This paper aims to provide an overview of applications of medical rapid prototyping (MRP)-assisted customized surgical guides (CSGs) and shows the potential of this technology in complex surgeries. This review paper also reports two case studies from open literature where MRP-assisted CSGs have been successfully used in complex surgeries.

Key publications from the past two decades have been reviewed.

This study concludes that the use of MRP-assisted CSGs improves the accuracy of surgery. Additionally, MRP-assisted CSGs make the surgery much faster, accurate and cheaper than any other technique. The outcome based on literature review and two case studies strongly suggested that MRP-assisted CSGs might become part of a standard protocol in the medical sector to operate the various complex surgeries, in the near future.

Advanced technologies like radiology, image processing, virtual surgical planning (VSP), computer-aided design (CAD) and MRP made it possible to fabricate the CSGs. MRP-assisted CSGs can easily transfer the VSP into the actual surgery.

This paper is beneficial to study the development and applications of MRP-assisted CSGs in complex surgeries.