Penelope is a scrub nurse, designed to help surgeons in the operating room with simple tasks. As reported in LiveScience, her developers at Robotic Surgical Tech, Inc. have built in sophisticated voice recognition and visual technology. Penelope listens to a request for an instrument, repeats it, chooses the right item and hands it to the surgeon. Afterwards, she replaces it on her tray and counts the set of instruments to eliminate the possibility that one will be left inside the patient. Penelope is able to make the same decisions as an experienced scrub nurse – anticipating which instrument the surgeon will want next and learning the instrument preferences of various doctors. One of her main attractions to the human operating room team is that she frees up the hands of a scrub nurse to provide direct care to the patient.

Penelope’s first job is assisting a surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital with the excision of a small, benign cyst.

Archie is already on the job, filling and dispensing prescriptions automatically. Dr. Chris Newman, a physician at Archbold Hospital in Thomasville, Georgia, credits Archie with being failsafe and fast. "We package every thing that comes in with a site-specific barcode," he said, explaining the system for a WALB-Albany television report. "The robot knows what it is, its strength, manufacturer, and expiration date." The patient is also scanned, and a match is made before a drug is dispensed. Dr. Newman describes the system as 100 percent accurate. Doctors regard Archie’s cost as tiny compared to the potential cost of giving a patient the wrong medication, according to the report.

Assigned to look in on patients, REMi started work at Shawnee Mission Medical Center in Kansas in March. A robo-doctor, REMi is already in service at another nine hospitals around the country. As reported in the Shawnee Dispatch newspaper, 5-foot-4 REMi looks like an upright vacuum cleaner with a screen on top. A doctor guides the robot with a joystick from a remote location. Dressed in a white lab coat, REMi whirrs from patient to patient, asking questions and recording and transmitting replies. Because of the two-way video and flat-screen monitor, the patient is able to see his or her physician while listening and responding.

The benefits? REMi increases physician-to-patient communication, according to Shawnee Medical Center, delivering higher-quality care. The human staff say the robot makes things easier, more efficient and even fun.

The word "fun" often crops up in descriptions of Penelopes, Archies and their robo-associates. It may not be a selling point to hospital administrators concerned with costs, but will speed up universal acceptance of robots by patients and human medical personnel alike.

Sources: LiveScience.com, WALB-TV Albany, Shawnee Dispatch