The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Exploring Robotic Surgeries and Patient Perspectives 

October 14, 2025

Neelam Singh

Thomas A. Edison CTE High School

10th Grade

Place yourself in the scenario of entering surgery. You would normally imagine your surgeon standing above you wearing gloves, instruments, and bright lighting. But what if instead of that, your surgeon is sitting a few feet away from a computer console and manipulating robotic arms that are actually conducting surgery within you? This would be like something out of a science fiction movie, but it is no longer in the future—it is a current reality that happens in hospitals now. Due to robotic surgery and artificial intelligence (AI), surgeons can make repairs in ways that are more precise, less damaging, and easy to recover from.

What is Robotic Surgery Anyway?

When others hear "robotic surgery," they conjure up an image of a machine working all alone. But that's not how it is. Robotic surgery is really a higher-tech method of surgeons carrying out delicate work. The surgeon is still completely in charge every step of the way. Rather than standing directly over the patient, the physician is sitting at a control console that has special hand controllers. Those hand controllers are attached to robotic arms that grip surgical instruments.

The robot itself doesn't make any decisions—but it reflects whatever motion the surgeon is creating, just really accurately. The robotic limbs won't shake like human hands sometimes do, and they even rotate where human wrists can't. To top it all off, a high-definition 3D camera allows the surgeon to have a really close and clear vision of whatever part they're working on. You could say it's like having "super-sight" in the operation room.

This technique also allows so-called "keyhole surgery." While a big incision is no longer necessary, a surgeon only needs small cuts. By means of these small cuts, robotic instruments can cut, stitch, and even eliminate tissue. For patients, it means less bleeding and less pain and fewer scars and a much earlier restoration to normal life. Some even have an earlier return to their homes compared to if they would have undergone regular surgery.

One of its most well-known systems is the Da Vinci Surgical System, which is older than 20 years now. It has been employed in conducting all sorts of surgery—heart surgery, lung surgery, and even prostate surgery.

How Patients Really Think About It

As exciting as robotic surgery is, it also can be frightening. You may have thought if you were going into surgery, "What if the robot messes up?" Can a machine be responsible for saving a life? These are instinctive reactions. Many patients feel afraid to start with, fearing a robot will replace the doctor or make a mistake.

But the important thing is that the surgeon is in charge all the time. The robot is a piece of kit, a highly sophisticated camera or scalpel. When doctors make these points clear to most patients, they do feel a good deal better.

And afterwards? Many patients are stunned. They will tell us that they hurt less, took less medicine to control that pain, and were up on their feet sooner than later. Those small scars are an extra advantage. Patients who have robotic-assisted surgery sometimes have such a smooth recovery that they are thankful that this technology could be offered to them.

However, not all are entirely comfortable. There is a concern that as AI becomes increasingly present in healthcare, it might make it seem less individual. Not only is being looked after by nurses and doctors about curing whatever is wrong but also about being listened to and reassured. You can't have a machine demonstrate empathy or be present to hold your hand when frightened. Only human carers can do that.

Balance Between Tech and Human Care

Robotic surgeries raise one of medicine's greatest questions of the day: how do we reconcile cutting-edge tech with warm human connection? While AI is capable of some truly extraordinary feats—reading medical images, identifying tiny cancers, and even assisting surgeons to make once-impossible incisions with unprecedented accuracy—patients do not want healthcare to become some cold, machine-based operation.

Surveys show that patients are enthused by robotic surgery's potential, but they desire a guarantee that their doctors will remain accessible to attend to them. They do not want AI to replace human touch. Perhaps robotic medicine's bright tomorrow will actually arrive when AI is in charge of technology's mechanized side—like robotic limbs moving or searching through vast data warehouses—but doctors and nurses use freed time to spend more time on their patients. Instead of filling out forms ad infinitum, they can spend more time listening, giving information, and reassuring.

Looking Ahead

The AI of the future in medicine is yet even more promising. Specialists forecast that robotic systems will be even more sophisticated and will assist surgeons with feedback in real time during surgery. As an illustration, AI could potentially tag difficult areas on the monitor or alert surgeons if something seems off. This would make surgeries even safer and faster.

Apart from surgery, AI is entering healthcare's other fields as well. There are some systems that already have the capacity to interpret DNA to predict illness years beforehand or create customized treatment regimens that are good for an individual person. No matter how much technology advances, however, a doctor's role will never be unimportant. AI is never to replace a doctor—it is to provide doctors with superior tools so that they may deliver superior care.

Conclusion

Robot surgeries and artificial intelligence are redefining our perception of healthcare. They enable more accurate surgery, smaller incisions, faster recoveries, and fewer complications. Yet patient voices keep reminding us that tech is only part of it. Patients want safe, cutting-edge medicine, yet they also want to be heard and treated as people. Here lies an uphill challenge—and an enormous opportunity—to create a subtle integration of AI's incredible potential and human physicians' invaluable empathy. Ultimately, robotic surgeries aren't machines getting the better of us. They're about providing surgeons "super tools" to make patients recover faster and recover better while keeping human touch in medicine intact.