????麻醉師、外科醫生、診斷醫師

????你可能覺得，醫生是一門需要實際操作經驗的職業，因此醫生是不可能被機器人取代的，但事實也并非如此。強生公司的Sedasys系統目前已經通過了FDA認證，可以在結腸鏡檢查等手術中實施低層次的麻醉術，它的成本還不到專業麻醉師的零頭。一名醫生在發揮人力因素的同時，還可以同時管理多臺機器。

????IBM的Watson系統由于在電視真人秀上大放異彩而廣為人知。不過很多人可能不知道，它在肺癌的診斷上擁有遠遠高于人類醫生的診斷準確率——在某些測試中，Watson系統與人類醫師的診斷準確率為90%對50%。原因是數據。要想讀完最新發布的醫療數據，人類醫師每周至少要花費160小時的時間，因此人類醫生不可能掌握全部的新見解甚至臨床證據，因此面對計算機時也就喪失了診斷方面的優勢。

????外科醫生已經在使用自動化系統輔助進行一些低侵入性的手術。目前雖然還是醫生負責手術的全過程，但終有一日，機器有可能獨立完成一些難度較低的手術。事實已經證明，機器人系統具有將腫瘤從人體組織剝離的能力。另外目前市面上已經有了至少一款用于進行毛發移植的機器人，使一名醫生在進行手術的同時可以監控多個規程。

????亨特登醫療中心（Hunterdon Medical Center）的機器人手術服務醫學總監普羅帕?高希表示：“我們以前用手工完成的很多事，現在已經通過機器人實現了自動化。比如現在我們不再手工縫合刀口，而是使用機器人縫合。”高希表示，由于解剖結構的變異，加上目前電腦在歸納模式上還存在一定難度，她目前還無法預測機器能夠如何充分完成自動化的手術。不過她補充道：“十年以前，我也絕對不會預見到這些東西發揮作用，所以很多說未來會發展成什么樣。”

????Anesthesiologists, Surgeons, and Diagnosticians

????You might think that doctors represented the ultimate in hands-on expertise that had to be local, but that isn't the case. Johnson & Johnson's Sedasys system, already FDA approved, can automate delivery of low-level anesthesiain applications like colonoscopies at the fraction of the cost of a dedicated anesthesiologist. A doctor can supervise multiple machines at the same time to keep the human element.

????IBM's Watson, well known for its stellar performance in the TV game show Jeopardy!, has already demonstrated a far more accurate diagnosis rate for lung cancers than humans -- 90 percent versus 50 percent in some tests. The reason is data. Keeping pace with the release of medical data could take doctors 160 hours a week, so doctors can't possibly review the amount of new insights or even bodies of clinical evidence that can give an edge in making a diagnosis.

????Surgeons already use automated systems to aid in low-invasive procedures. Right now, the doctor is in charge, but eventually machines might do simpler procedures themselves. According to Beane, there have already been demonstrations -- on Silly Putty -- of how a robotic system could potentially remove tumors from tissue. There is also at least one hair transplant robot on the market, allowing one surgeon to oversee multiple procedures at the same time.

????"A lot of things we do manually we have automated through robotics," said Dr. Propa Ghosh, medical director of robotics surgical services at Hunterdon Medical Center. "Instead of using sutures, now we're using robotic staplers." She finds it hard to see how machines could do fully automated surgeries because of anatomical variations and the current difficulty computers have in generalizing patterns. However, Ghosh added, "I never could have predicted have the things that have come to play ten years ago, so it's hard to say where the future will be."