This article is a brilliant piece of work and the video is well worth watching…

[Ron Lindeboom]

After our new engineering team finishes up the new COW website (which leaves behind the old codebase and changes out to a WordPress-based system which we’ll begin introducing in October), we are going to be working with a doctor to develop a website for his machines which are pushing the envelope on medical technology. When we asked him why he conceived the things that he has, he remarked that he can see a widening divide between the haves and the have-nots — which is only going to grow and leave many without medical care under the present system. So he is working to bring tech to bear that will largely do much of the work with machines and greatly reduce the cost of medical care. I think he’s right, the future is not going to be a repeat of the status quo as we have known it.

Best regards,

Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC

Creativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.

[Jren David]

yup. I just do it

[Mike Cohen]

[Ronald Lindeboom] “Already there are robots that are doing surgery. So the idea may not be as outlandish as it might first appear.”

Surgeons do surgery – the robot is a sophisticated tool. The AI required for surgery is more complex than for driving. While a self-driving car may need to make a split-second choice about whether to hit an animal or a person, a surgical robot would need to differentiate between anatomical structures that may look identical to its sensors. It may one day replace humans but not in our lifetimes.

[Roger Van duyn]

Ron, these quotes from the articles you posted are “marketing spin”. The Newsweek article especially doesn’t mention all the failures the researchers encountered. That would mess up the thrust of the article, to generate buzz for potential investors, which also includes government agencies that dole out the grants, and the news media’s own tendencies to generate fear to increase the number of reads and views (advertising dollars). The companies want to hype their stuff. The media both hypes and generates fear. Anything to get more views and reads.

Researchers market their work and ideas to get the grants and the funding from investors and the government. I spent thirty years in the medical laboratories, and watched the steady increase of automation. NOTHING EVER WORKED AS WELL as claimed in the publications. NOTHING!!!

With every system, the more complex it becomes, the more potential points of failure. Human expertise will always be indispensable to keep technology going. Don’t fall for the HYPE or the FEAR. All of our technology is just about always on the verge of failure, but for the dedicated human beings expending so much effort to keep everything working. Really. Our culture is treating science and technology like it’s some kind of magic to worship. Nothing could be further than the truth. It’s tools. And yes, I’ve always derived great pleasure when the tools my coworkers and I were using worked well. When they went down, and they ALL WENT DOWN from time to time, it was always a nightmare if we didn’t have a backup analyzer ready to go.

Roger

[Roger Van duyn]

For anyone interested in seeing how far HYPE and FEAR can go with medical technologies, just start reading up on all the people suckered in by the Theranos “magic box” to do all the laboratory testing from their itty, bitty special fingerstick sampling device. I’m sure that not all the PhD’s and MD’s that were involved in that scandal were fooled because the MD’s at least, have to do some real laboratory work during their education. The founder of the company was afraid of needles, having all those tubes of blood drawn. Then she and the other main guy at Theranos started hyping a better way. They took in Walgreens, and many venture capitalists along the way.

People want magic. Technology isn’t magic.

The Theranos scandal makes for very interesting reading. I followed it for quite a while. Couldn’t believe how easily people fell for it. I don’t really think robots will ever get to the point they work like magic.

Roger

[Ron Lindeboom]

Roger,

Are you really going to tell me that Johns Hopkin University School of Medicine is just doing this for “marketing spin”?

Some of you really need to get out more, there’s life outside your edit bays.

Best regards,

Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC

Creativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Did you actually read either of the two articles I pointed to, Mike? They state fairly categorically that robots are already in the process of doing just that. Since you didn’t read those ones, I’ll dig out a few more later on and just keep doing that until you guys actually have to admit to yourselves that there are far more things in this world than are dreamed of in…oh wait, I like you guys. Never mind. 😀

Best regards,

Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC

Creativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.

[Roger Van duyn]

I believe Mike is correct.

I read the Newsweek article and the Forbes article you posted. They’re hype.

What Johns Hopkins Administrators had to say is no more surprising than what Cleveland Clinic Administrators said 4 or 5 years ago about Theranos. But not all are gullible. Sometimes people have other motives. A former head of the CDC was on the board of Theranos, along with out present Secretary of Defense, 2 past Secretaries of State, etc. At one time Theranos was worth about ten billion dollars.

Maybe you ought to type “Theranos Scandal” into your favorite browser search bar and read some of those articles. You’d see a great similarity with your articles on surgical robots and the early articles of Theranos, like this one from Forbes:

What Forbes said July 2014: https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/07/02/bloody-amazing/#1ce5e4797226

Of course, it was all technological hype.

Here’s what Forbes has to say more recently:

What Forbes said in April: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2018/04/14/the-theranos-con/#2d8a77552314

Be skeptical of hype. Technology isn’t magic. It’s an assortment of tools.

I spent many more years in the lab than I ever have in the edit bay. Thousands upon thousands of hours more behind the microscope than behind the camera. I’ve operated dozens and dozens of robotic systems thousands and thousands of times. I’m skeptical of those articles.

Roger

[Ron Lindeboom]

Seriously, guys… You know more than Johns Hopkin and Newsweek? Oh please… ????

Sorry, but we’ll revisit this in a few years and then I’ll smile when even the most stubborn of you will have to concede the obvious.

Have a good night.

Best regards,

Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC

Creativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.

[Ron Lindeboom]

Strawman arguments and imputing ad hominem unrelated issues shows the weakness of the discussion at hand.

If you wish to shoot down “magic” technology, I will bring out my own strawman for you: I was forced to retire from the COW for the better part of six years because after many years of being over-medicated and fed antibiotics far too often, in one blood test I had a single white blood cell showing up — my immune system had shut down and I was screwed. Doctors told me that there was no more they could do for me and that the pathogens were too virulent and I would soon be dead. (Most of you are unaware but Kathlyn is a retired licensed microbiologist who worked in the hospital labs for many years. She can verify the story for you or you can choose to disbelieve it completely, I really don’t care.)

Thankfully, instead I did my own research and bought a machine that is TOTALLY unapproved of by the AMA and which they say is quackery. But after being told twice to go home and get my affairs in order because I was done for and that the doctors could not help me anymore — I researched cutting edge technologies and came up with an answer that I have been using since 2010. Around the world there are hundreds of thousands of us dealing with diseases that the sickcare industry is unable and in some cases, unwilling to address.

It wasn’t instantaneous and I had to shut down the Creative COW Magazine because it took a lot of work to rebuild an immune system that had completely collapsed due to over-medication with antibiotics. My machine became my surrogate immune system. With it, I was able to rebuild my immune system to the point that my last few years tests have been normal.

There are many people at the COW who know me quite well and who know the story and were around for the ups and downs of it. They know that what I am saying is quite honest. I also have another users group going for the machine I use and so I have plenty enough people who know what I am saying is true. Your approval and insincere acquiescence is not necessary.

So go ahead and pretend you have all the answers, which my return to the COW proves that you don’t — neither you nor the healthcare industry. Both of you are good at what you are good at, and if I were in a car wreck I would want an American surgeon not my machine. But the sickcare system sucks at dealing with those who suffer with chronic disease. But if you think you have all the answers, you are unaware that as Shakespeare said long ago: there are many more things in heaven and on Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.

But if it makes you feel better and helps you to sleep at night, go ahead and pretend to know more than you obviously do. I am done with this discussion because I have a website to totally rebuild from the ground up and I am far too busy to argue with the close-minded.

There, since you introduced strawmen, I have proudly introduced my own lovely scarecrow…

Best regards,

Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC

Creativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.