Robo-Mommy

Scientists have developed a robot that simulates a woman giving birth.  This full sized robot will emit pulse rates, breathe, urinate and deliver a small plastic baby.  She can be configured to deliver normally or have special complications such as breech birth or an abnormally long or short labor.  All of this allows medical staff to train on something realistic, without using women as guinea pigs.

Of course nothing beats actual hands on training (ask youself if you'd rather have an ob-gyn who delivered 1000 babies, or had used this machine 1000 times - or a pilot who flew vs. flight simulator, etc), but this is a big help to good training.  It would really help in special circumstances, where nurses and doctors would be more relaxed the first time they see a real complication, because they had seen it simulated before.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention a funny comment on the WorldMagBlog thread where I saw this story; commenter Llama says "They really need this 'Birthing Robot' in Europe and other developed countries where real births are too low in number to do adequate training for medical practitioners."  Ouch