AWARD YEAR
2021
CATEGORY
Work
GOALS
Good Health & Well-being, Decent Work & Economic Growth
KEYWORDS
robotics , Eye surgery , medical assistance
COUNTRY
Belgium
DESIGNED BY
Jonas Smits
WEBSITE
https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/2020/project/eye-robot/
Eye-Robot
A robotic helper for optimised eye surgey
This breakthrough technology enables eye surgeons to perform surgery with superhuman precision. With this device, surgeons aspire to perform groundbreaking new procedures for currently untreatable blindness, including high-precision delivery of gene-therapy.
Currently, surgical robotic technology is not applied conventionally and remains the topic of early clinical research. This technology was among the first in the world to reach this point, offering patients access to promising new treatments which would otherwise not be possible to safely perform. Furthermore, in contrast to conventional surgical robots, no joystick is required to operate the robot. For maximum safety and intuitiveness, the surgeon retains direct control of the instrument and its motion. Also, the system is dimensioned in such a way that the surgeon can manually override the mechanism if needed in an adverse event - for instance during power failure.