Adobe Stock Just as automation is closing the labor gap in manufacturing, AI and robotic technology are beginning to close the worldwide gap in doctors. Automation is growing in the medical industry, from robot surgery to AI that’s used to analyze radiology images. This is not surprising, since healthcare has been at the forefront in adopting emerging technologies, from additive manufacturing to mobile robots. As well as bringing efficiencies and precision to healthcare, automation is helping to overcome the same issue that manufacturing plants face: expert labor shortages. At the MD&M BIOMEDigital conference, two radiologists who are also chief medical officers (CMOs) at tech companies, explained two ways in which automation has forcefully entered the medical field -- through surgery and AI-based image analysis. “Part of the issue that makes medical robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) important is the worsening shortage of physicians,” Eyal Morag, MD and CMO at Microbot Medical, said during the presentation,