Robots check into operating theatres, but they are not making the cut yet

Surgical robotics have obvious advantages

This month, India is at the centre of two landmark developments that could address perhaps the biggest roadblocks in health care delivery today: cost, infrastructure and skilled manpower.

One is the invention of what is arguably the world’s cheapest ventilator. Diwakar Vaish, a 25-year-old robotics engineer in Delhi, claims to have invented a portable ventilator that neither requires oxygen supply nor a skilled technician to operate it. The device, co-developed by Deepak Agarwal, a neurosciences professor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, is controlled by an Android app and uses a phone or a tablet display. Its