From eHealthServer.com: Robotics experts at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Washington (UW) have completed a set of seven advanced robotic surgery systems for use by major medical research laboratories throughout the United States. After a round of final tests, five of the systems will be shipped to medical robotics researchers at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, while the other two systems will remain at UC Santa Cruz and UW.

“We decided to follow an open-source model, because if all of these labs have a common research platform for doing robotic surgery, the whole field will be able to advance more quickly,” said Jacob Rosen, associate professor of computer engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz and principal investigator on the project.

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Open Systems play a major role in our industrialized society. They allow to break the dependence from one single technology supplier and encourage third parties to add new ideas and innovate.

It is important to see that this is not only happening in Software but also in medical technology as well as in architecture and other areas. Which other important use of Open Systems are you aware of?

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