Life - saving by machines?

[fantasus]

Perhaps parts of the following ideas are alrerady in use somehwere on earth at least some of it should be realistic at the moment.
Automated devices for life saving (or if you like, "robots" for a specified purpose) Who can give first aid (get hearth to work, stop bleeding, activate respiration, regulate body temperature, protect against additional damage, etcetera, etcetera - even calling help form the world outside). Especially a potential usefull thing in risky situations were people are alone, or may lack qualified assistance (example:lonely drivers, or people overboard in water).

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

Why don't we just build a machine that will live forever, let it take on the burden of this "species" business?

 

[cosmictraveler]

There are certain machines like heart defibrillator's and respirators but they really need to have someone else to use them properly. It would be difficult to get a machine to actually come to where you have fallen down and are not able to get up or are unconscious.

 

[Mr. Hamtastic]

That explains the implants! I should have known!

 

[cosmictraveler]

Implants must have someone else put it in and recharge it.

 

[lightgigantic]

Perhaps parts of the following ideas are alrerady in use somehwere on earth at least some of it should be realistic at the moment.
Automated devices for life saving (or if you like, "robots" for a specified purpose) Who can give first aid (get hearth to work, stop bleeding, activate respiration, regulate body temperature, protect against additional damage, etcetera, etcetera - even calling help form the world outside). Especially a potential usefull thing in risky situations were people are alone, or may lack qualified assistance (example:lonely drivers, or people overboard in water).

maybe we could build a machine that could fix other machines, since their systems always crash

 

[Asguard]

ok i was flicking through the whos online and saw a guest looking at this. Cosmic there are problems with that which show up in this whole idea. I mean look at an ECG for instance, its just a measure of electrical energy and cant tell you anything about what the pt is doing.

For instance Ventricical tachicardia (VT) is an arest rythum but ONLY if its pulseless. You can have a pt concious with VT and that cant be defibed. The Automated defibs will tell you if it has a VT (well actually it will tell you it has a shockable rythum because they are designed to be used by monkeys) but it wont tell you if the pt has a pulse.

The one thing i dont know ANY machine capiable of reading is conciousness. It takes a HUMAN to determine if someone is concious or not (for reference this tends to be done using Glasco coma scale GCS)

Further more a machine can ONLY do what its been programed for, it cant laterally think. For instance do you balance GTN with fluid resus for a pt with hypotention and the potentual for a heart atack or do you just drive really fast.

What do you do if a pt has a mild allergy to penicillan and has maninococal.

They cant think and actually make those hard decisions on the go, they can only follow basic and maybe advanced algorthums but they cant adapt. Med is all about adaption which is why we use guidelines not rules

then there are other problems like What if the machine malfuntions

 

[cosmictraveler]

then there are other problems like What if the machine malfuntions

Then kiss your ass goodbye!