A medical robot makes headway

Recession or no, hospitals still seem enthusiastic about the $1.4 million surgical robots made by Intuitive Surgical.
Photos: Robotic surgeons
The New York Times

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[mutualin4mation]

Accuray vs Intuitive is a false comparison.

What journalist don't understand about medicine and device technology could fill this web page.

Accuray and Intuitive don't compete for sales because they do different things. One uses radiation and the other uses a knife. What "robot" you can buy has nothing to do with the decision to use radiation or a knife to cut out a tumor.

The sales of CyberKnifes are driven by what charge codes you can send to payers. It has nothing to do with how good it is or if it's better. It's computer planning system is NOT better and what you can do with other systems sold by Varian, Elekta or even TomoTherapy is can be better and much or accurate in terms of radiation calculations.

I know way too much about this topic so I'll shut up now. If I needed a new radiation therapy machine (which my department will in a couple of years) I would not buy a CyberKnife.

[MrHandle]

Hospitals--Recession lol

What does a hospital care about a recession. It's not like people are going to forego a necessary operation etc... when they are in need of one.

But, I could be wrong.