Robots to the rescue

Singapore — In a field where the human touch is often prized — be it when diagnosing a patient, or helping a patient through his recovery — Mr Ivan Khoo, chief executive of healthcare robotics company Abacus Global Technology, sees the potential for robots to play a bigger part.

Such was his conviction that he left his job of 15 years — as a research and development (R&D) engineer with a German medical-technology company — to set up his firm to develop home-grown solutions for the medical field.

With Singapore grappling with the twin problems of an ageing population and a labour crunch, Mr Khoo said: “You will only see more and more robotics coming in, particularly for healthcare, which is a more immediate need, and not only in the surgical area.”

Indeed, a robot that his company is developing — called AmaKris SR 2 — could go from simply performing colonoscopies to becoming a fully-automated diagnostic tool, diagnosing colon cancer in a less costly and labour-intensive way. “You sit there, press a button and everything is settled. You get the result and a surgeon somewhere could be ‘telemedicined’,” Mr Khoo said.

This would also allow the public to access care by more experienced doctors — who are in short supply — as the diagnosis could be done “through a computer (by) a senior surgeon sitting somewhere” who has access to the data obtained by the robot. It takes years of experience for a doctor to make a diagnosis from a colonoscopy well, noted Mr Khoo.

He and three other industry professionals came together to set up Abacus in 2011, after they realised that there was an opportunity to apply robotics in healthcare, particularly in the areas of hospital service and surgery. “It was at a time when there were not many similar companies in the market ... We saw a potential and went for it,” said Mr Khoo.

Starting out with S$300,000 in capital and just four people, the company has since grown into a team of seven from around the world.

Its Epush service robot, which reduces a 300kg hospital bed into one weighing 20kg, requiring just one nurse to transport it rather than two, made headlines last year for clinching the National Healthcare Group’s Innovation Supplier Award.

Abacus is making 100 units of Epush for Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH), and is working with Danish-based facility-services provider ISS to launch a derivative of the robot.

Having amassed S$500,000 worth of orders — with seven patents pending — the company will break even this year, after four years. “It was a risk and an adventure that we took together with our eyes wide open,” said Mr Khoo. Wanting to meet immediate healthcare needs and to make an impact in the healthcare robotics arena keeps the team going.

“In the early days, we had to work hard at building up credibility and a track record so that the end customer would endorse our solutions and place orders,” said Mr Khoo, who is appreciative of KTPH for giving his company a chance. To save on expenses, the team performs much of the basic administrative work on their own.

Picking up the rubbish bin sitting under his desk, Mr Khoo joked: “The CEO is like the ‘cheap executive officer’, you know, I have to do this myself.”

Much of the manufacturing is also done by themselves to save costs — all 100 Epush units are assembled and tested for functionality in their office, using 3-D printing.

But Mr Khoo emphasised that Abacus does not skimp on quality, noting their medical-grade quality control system, which covers the entire operation from R&D, prototyping, clinical trials and mass production to after-sales service support. It has an employee overseeing quality, and every product or design is sent to British Standards Institute for testing to ensure it meets the European Medical Device Directive (EMDD) standard for safety and quality. Most medical companies in Singapore adhere to the EMDD standard, said Mr Khoo.

Currently, the team is working on the AmaKris SR 2 robot, which features an ultrasound anal probe. It can also split the scan of the colon into five tissue layers, and project this view in three dimensions to detect cancerous growth within the colon.

This makes identifying colorectal cancer staging easier, enabling surgeons to better determine treatment plans, and gives it an edge over the usual colonoscopy.

With the more explicit imaging, it “actually (reduces) the learning curve for surgeons — they don’t have to read a few hundred (colonoscopy results) to get the hang of it”, said Mr Khoo. The firm has obtained a S$500,000 grant from SPRING Singapore to develop the robot.

Abacus has also developed robots with smart sensors that can detect patients who fall or get out of bed. The information is transmitted to wearable technology on the nurses or caregivers. To reduce manpower needs and improve efficiency, they have also developed a service robot named Amabelle, which transports laboratory samples independently — with sensors to let it navigate obstacles.

Even as he expressed optimism over the future of robotics in healthcare, Mr Khoo acknowledged the challenge of keeping his venture commercially viable in the local business environment. Singapore’s small market size and the low entry barriers to the market make it difficult for local companies to produce service robots from scratch. As such, companies have to turn to adopting technology developed in larger countries, he said.

But the role robotics plays in transforming almost all areas of life remains undoubted. As much as the human touch will be needed, it “will be part of our lives …. (to) help us in small parts of our lives here and there”, he said.