The Coming Age of Robots by George Pettinico & George R. Milne

Author:George Pettinico & George R. Milne [George Pettinico]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Business Expert Press
Published: 2020-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Take Two Robots and Call Me in the Morning: Robots in Health Care

The potential for robotic implications in health care are wide ranging, and all are predicted to change the way hospitals and health care systems are being managed.

—Anees Fareed, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Al Jalila Children’s Hospital, Dubai (Fareed 2018)

Chapter Overview

Hospitals and assisted living facilities are likely to be among the first places where consumers experience robots in a significant and personal way. Hence, we devote this entire chapter to robots in health care. We first explore the various ways robots are already being used in health care, including as delivery robots in hospitals, as companion robots to keep the elderly company and also aid them in their health care regimes, as roving information sources in hospitals, as assistants in dental surgery, and (soon) as phlebotomists. We then explore public opinion regarding specific health care tasks, and see how accepting people are of robots taking on a variety of roles. We dig deeper to understand why there is support for robots assisting people with highly personal activities such as bathing and personal grooming, but resistance to robots taking on roles of greater skill and importance in health care, even though robots will likely be quite capable of handling these roles in the near future.

As we discuss throughout this book, over the next couple of decades there will be numerous areas of life where consumers will find themselves increasingly interacting with robots. The health care industry, and in particular hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living facilities will likely be among the first places to significantly integrate robots into their daily functions. And this integration will be done in a manner that is highly visible and in many cases up close and personal with patients and visitors. We anticipate this for three reasons: (1) health care is a labor intensive industry where staff interact closely with patients, (2) many health care facilities must operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with significant patient-oriented activities taking place around the clock, and (3) health care is a growing industry due to aging populations worldwide. Hence, we felt an exploration of robots in the health care industry, and the likely consumer response, was worth extra attention.

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