Who Needs Technology? A 2-Part Series
Part 2: AI and Healthcare

Who Needs Technology:
Would You Let a Robot Save Your Life?

(Warning: This article is for Luddites only)

In Part 1 of this series, we saw how AI is turning our homes into a gaggle of gadgets that can grant even our most whimsical wishes.

In this post, we’ll consider AI and your health: specifically, how comfortable you are with medical robots.

Forget about Robots:
How Do You Like Telehealth?

Chances are, you’re already using a lot of tech in your quest for good healthcare. If you live in a rich country, your general practitioner probably requires you to schedule an appointment via the internet—whether you like it or not. If you’re lucky enough to live in an urban area, you’ve got a choice. Option 1: in-person visit. Option 2: a “telehealth” ordeal where you’re twisting yourself into a pretzel to show the camera—and the doc—the gash on your knee.

Telehealth Doctor, mom and baby
A patient talking to her orthopedist during a telehealth consultation.
Photo: Getty Images

If you can’t score an in-person appointment, it’s likely because you live in a less-populated area, where your doc is simply too far away. That’s why today, millions of patients, with everything from a racing heartbeat to a battered knee, are “settling” for telehealth appointments.

But wait. Since when is using teleconferencing technology for medical care a case of “settling?” Does the need to adjust your camera constitute a cruel and unusual demand on you, as a patient? Have we all lost our minds?

Remote healthcare is simply one kind of medical treatment. And before we bash it, let’s act like adults and look at the realities of the 2020s and beyond.

The fact is, telehealth works. And these kinds of visits are already gaining a foothold. According to Chicago Erie Health Center’s 2020 annual report, one-third of their patients—nearly half a million people—were cared for remotely. Given this trend, you can pretty much kiss the in-person handshake (or elbow bump) with your doctor goodbye.

Know Your Medical Robots:
A Primer

If you don’t like making medical appointments via the internet, and you dislike seeing your doctor over Zoom, then you’re probably gonna despise what’s next in healthcare: technology will be everywhere in our (medical) lives. Before you know it, you’ll be interacting with a care robot (yes, that’s a thing). And, though you don’t know it yet, there may be a robot in your midst. While our mental image of robots may be that of an automated person—a kind of Stars Wars-inspired C-3PO—the reality is that robots look different according to their function: surgical robot, logistics robot, or care robot.

That’s a lot of robots.

Da Vinci Robot operating on a patient
Surgeons controlling the da Vinci robot tools remotely while viewing the procedure in 3-D on high-definition monitors.
Credit: Leszek Szymanski/EPA via Shutterstock

Medical robots aren’t even that new. Enter the da Vinci Surgical System, circa 1995, with its 3D, high-definition vision system—and get a load of those (mechanical) arms! And today, surgical robots still look like Shiva: arms everywhere. The arms’ range of motion is truly super-human: 15% of all surgeries in the US now use surgical robots. After all, there’s no way a robot will mistake your spleen from your gall bladder, let alone a 1.23-nanometer incision from an infinitesimally smaller one. Robots are nothing if not precise.

Beyond the operating room, logistics robots streamline hospital activities. For example, fleets of functional-looking robots do all kinds of grunt work, from delivering supplies to disinfecting corridors—all in the flash of an eye.

And now for the species of robot that, in the near future, may save your life if you’re, say, choking on a chicken bone: the care robot. Your savior may look like any one of 52 different types of care robots that exist now. That’s 52 different kinds of machines, with names like Nao, Hobbit, and Pharos.

The popular humanoid care robot named Nao is actually a close friend of mine: I worked with them professionally for around a decade. One of Nao’s goals in life is to help keep you company. To this end, Nao entertains you—and your pals on the pediatrics ward, as well as grandma, in geriatrics. Nao can put on a show for you, or interact with you, using a pre-programmed repertoire of song- and dance-routines, riddles, and games.

Patrice and Nao Robot
Patrice Caire testing whether, to interact with children in the hospital, her Nao robot is correctly switching between languages.
Photo: Luxembourger Wort

If Nao’s task is to keep you company, then Hobbit’s raison d’être is to keep you safe: Hobbit, that clever bot, detects your upcoming falls—and prevents them, picking up the offending jellybeans from the floor, and pushing the claw-footed chair out of the way, so you don’t end up face-down on the rug.

Last but not least, just as Nao entertains you, and Hobbit protects you, Pharos helps you stay fit. But Luddites (and paranoiacs) beware: you may object to Pharos’s role as your overlord: Pharos is watching you. Recording you. Analyzing your every moan, every crunch. All the while, Pharos is optimizing your daily exercise regimen—and telling you what to do.

Life with Robots:
The Pitfalls

Indeed, robots spend a shit-ton of time “watching” us—purportedly to help us. But we’re right to be worried about living under surveillance; data breaches are as frequent as flash floods, these days.   

Another drawback to robots in health care is the looming threat to physical safety. Consider the Baxter robot, which weighs in at 300 pounds. How are you gonna feel when bulky Baxter leans in a little too close with the razor while shaving your beard? One false move, and … you get the picture.

How To Save Your Own Life
(Hint: Get Over Your Tech-phobia)

So, those are the cons. But even the most vehement Luddite among us must admit: today’s robots are multi-talented, precise, fast—and never get tired.

So, my advice: Just say yes to robots.

Because one day, they may just save your life.