Recent innovations have been on the rise due to COVID-19 being the world’s current reality. Scientists and engineers are using artificial intelligence to program healthcare robots and implement them into the healthcare industry, making it possible for robots to take on tasks commonly performed by human healthcare professionals.
Robots in medicine have been around for decades. According to Matthews (2019), robots in the medical field first emerged in 1985 when a robotic arm called PUMA successfully assisted with surgery for the first time.
However, according to healthcaredegree.net today’s robotic innovations are even more advanced. healthcare robots help to relieve “medical personnel from routine tasks that take their time away from more pressing responsibilities.”
Currently, the responsibilities of healthcare robots are programmed to disinfect patients’ rooms, carrying meals, and taking samples to transport, analyze, and store them. However, the future of healthcare and artificial intelligence strives deeper than the everyday tasks. Robots are now responsible for surgeries in small places and transportation of dangerous substances.
In terms of daily routine tasks, Kayla Mullins, Licensed Practical Nurse at Candler Hospital located in Savannah, Georgia said that her routine tasks include providing vaccines and administering medications.
“I’d be nervous if they were providing medications, because certain patients need certain dosages, and of course robots are able to calculate dosages because they are programmed to do so, but who’s to say that your patient won’t have a reaction,” Mullins said. “The robot wouldn’t be able to actually revive the patient, or perform proper precautions if something happens.”
There have been questions raised regarding whether or not robots are unreliable in terms of
healthcare, due to unavoidable inconsistencies that come with technology. Breyanna McCoy, senior Public Health major at Georgia Southern agrees with Mullins about the tasks that robots should be limited to. She expressed that healthcare robot’s jobs should begin and end with tasks such as storage and data collection, but feels strongly that most healthcare professionals' jobs are safe in terms of threat from robots infiltrating the industry.
McCoy's main concern regarded the general reliability of computers, the cost and the funding it would take to incorporate them into the industry.
“After a while computers start to die fast, they get viruses if you don’t routinely maintain and update them,” McCoy said. “The healthcare industry is a trillion dollar industry, with the money it takes to fix machines, I’m not sure why we would add a billion dollar problem to that.”
According to Mohammed Sorez, an Information Technology graduate from Georgia Southern University, artificial intelligence is essentially a handyman for technology.
“The whole premise of IT is that something is going to break, and you need to know how to fix it,” Sores said. “When it comes to a robot or AI messing up, that’s just what technology does, even when it comes to humans, there is always human error-- it’s just going to happen.”
Funding is a major reason healthcare professionals aren’t sure just how fair AI in the healthcare industry will go.
According to rn.com “robots in U.S. hospital workforce tend to fall into two categories: robots that replace a job previously handled by humans, and telemedicine-based robotics that connect clinicians and patients.”
In terms of future innovations of robots, as it relates to the field of medicine and artificial intelligence, questions have been raised regarding just how far advancements can and will go. Hope Fields, Medical doctor for Kaiser Permanente located in Smyrna, Georgia mentioned that in medicine, practitioners have to be both subjective and objective, but robots are only able to be objective.
“Robots aren’t able to practice discernment,” Fields said. “In medicine we have to be able to be subjective, objective, assess, and plan-- I’m not worried at all about robots infiltrating this industry, you can’t replace humans when it comes to medicine.”
The future of robots will likely have a strong foothold in the healthcare industry. Future innovations of robots will involve an integration of robotics and telemedicine which healthcare professionals refer to as tele-nursing. Tele-nursing involves robots becoming the nurse’s eyes, ears, and body. The advancements and components necessary to make tele-nursing possible are becoming increasingly mature with time.