Many of you probably saw the movie I, Robot. It envisioned a future where robots walked the dog, got our groceries, picked up our kids from school, etc...

As hollywoodistic (is that a word?) and futuristic as that sounds, robots are already being used in hospitals today.

Here an InTouch robot can move and interact with patients and staff as directed by a remote doctor.

Check out this blogger, who is a machine when it comes to bloggin about robots. He's got some great summary posts on how robots are being used in hospitals - mostly to help pharmacists and to help doctors have "remote presence."

Johns Hopkins (just named the #1 hospital AGAIN) is experimenting with robots that help doctors examine patients remotely (read another story about Johns Hopkins here).

Hospitals in the UK are cutting costs by replacing pharmacists with robots. Another hospital is using Robonurse Penelope as their scrub tech, who just successfully assisted "her" first surgery last month at NY-Pres.


Doesn't look like a "Penelope" to me; nonetheless, still effective.