Imagine, the possibility of a robot standing near your operating table with its silver metal hands operating on your brain. It may seems hard to believe but specialist within the medical world say that medical staff will eventually be overtaken by robots (Yasa, 2018). Robots are disrupting the healthcare industry. In fact, there are already some robots in the health care industry: Watson and Da Vinci, these are not names of intelligent human doctors but of robotics that are being used within the medical field.
First, we have Watson, Watson is a robot that is developed by the global technology company IBM to help physicians with their diagnosis and management plans for patients who suffer from cancer. Watson is stored with information from restrictions, rules, medical journals, practices and books (IBM, n.d.). The previous mentioned in combination with a patient’s medical record, will eventually lead to the best possible solution based on evidence.
Da Vinci is another popular medical robot that assist surgeons during an operation through a technology that enables precise movements by using small instruments. The robot recreates the hand movement of surgeons. Da Vinci is available in Australia and around the world and it has already contributed to more than a million operations (Anandan, 2015).
The application of robots in the healthcare industry is still in its initial phase and Robots as Watson and Da Vinci are still not common within the medical field. The technology needs to advance further before it will completely take over the physician’s work. If the robots are fully developed, they will probably treat patients better than any doctor could . Scientist assume that this new reality will probably happen over a longer period of time.
The question remains, who do you want as a doctor, a human being or a robot?
Anandan, T. M. 2015. Robots and Healthcare Saving Lives Together. Robotic Industries Association. Retrieved on 10 October 2018 from: https://www.robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial- Robotics-Industry-Insights/Robots-and-Healthcare-Saving-Lives-Together/content_id/5819.
IBM, Retrieved on 10 October 2018 from: https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/ibm-watson-for-oncology
Yasa, D. 2018. Why Robots Could Soon Replace Our Doctors. Retrieved on 10 October 2018 from: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/why-robots-could-soon-replace-our-doctors/news-story/9c33db2f25e0fff6184603b38cdc641f
Hey Dina, thanks a lot for your post! It is an interesting topic which will gain more and more attention in the future.
To be honest, I never really thought about robots becoming real doctors. First of all, I think it is interesting and also to an extend amazing to see prototypes of robots and what they are able to do. Think about how establishing robots as doctors would change the medicine era. No more cues in doctors offices, no more waiting for an appointment with a specialist and no more overworked doctors themselves. If you think about those aspects, the idea of robot doctors sounds like a lot of advantages.
However, it is obvious that there are lots of ethical violation involved as well. Obviously, robot doctors would not take over surgery in the beginning, but they most likely will in the future. And who is to judge when a robot has to decide on right and wrong and does the wrong thing and someone dies? In the worst case: who will be sued? The hospital? The doctors office? Or the company who built the robot or who wrote the code? And even if it is not a life or death decision, small “mistakes” can change patients lives forever. Human doctors make mistakes as well, but that is seen as “human”. Robot doctors would not be able to rely on mistakes being “robot”, because everybody would expect robots to not make any mistakes.
In my opinion, robot doctors should never be exchanged for human doctors in any kind of field in medicine.
Judith
Hi Dina!
Interesting article. Artificial intelligence as a surgeon in the future seems like an idea with a lot of potential. However, I feel like there will be complications that might be hard to overcome. For example, what happens if the surgeon is to operate on a medical condition that has never been encountered before? The AI will probably not know how to deal with this, as there has never been an example to follow. Or if there are problems with the AI that only come to the suface very rarely. Problems with the software of AI are often very hard to solve and could costs lives in this case.
So, I think that a human hand in the medical field will always be valuable (if not) critical for successful healthcare services. What do you think about this?
Interesting thought, and to be honest I think it is very much possible that robots will take over this kind of role in the future.
If you would ask my parents they would probably disagree entirely, and tell us they want to have a human doctor, because of human interaction needed to feel secure and looked after. Some of us find it hard to imagine it is possible to trust and care for a robot on the same level as we do for other actual people.
If we however look at the reality, we can already see a change happening. An interesting read on this topic is one by Dr. John Danaher [1] who says there are different types of friendships or relations. There are utility friendships – revolving around getting access to stuff you wouldn’t have without this friend. A second form is pleasure friendships – where the value comes from interaction. Lastly there are “Artistotelian” friendships – where you share values, concerns and interest with the other person.
Most of us agree on the fact that is possible for robots to behave in such a way that the first two types of friendship are obtained. There are a lot of people however that think it is intrinsically impossible to have a Aristotelian type of relationship with a robot, but this is where Dr Danaher disagrees. He says the brain is a machine of some kind and he puts it as follows: “We might believe that our pals share our values and are acting honestly, but just as with robots, we have no great insight into their inner mental life – all we have to go on is the stuff on the outside, just like with robots”.
Time will tell if Dr. Danaher is right, but I think in due time we have robots looking after us in hospitals.
Hi Dina! Great post!
As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about this recently when I saw this article (the article is in Dutch but really interesting): https://www.ad.nl/rotterdam/robot-in-schiedams-ziekenhuis-pepper-vraagt-maar-speelt-ook-saxofoon~a2324a71/. I agree with how robots are going to be used for surgeries etc., but I also believe that robots could serve another purpose within a hospita: helping/ replacing a nurse. As a matter of fact, this might be a first step before replacing doctors. What do you think?
Interesting read, Jan-Joost. In my opinion one of the most important barriers to the implementation of healthcare robots is perception and public opinion. In line with that thought, I believe there is an essential difference between the two projects you mention in your article. Where IBM Watson is more about ‘non-physical’ data analysis and diagnosis, the Da Vinci project actually involves physical aid of robotics during operations.
Using robots during an operation of course sounds quite scary, but that’s also why covering the two different technologies as one might be detrimental to the adoption of these innovations. When asked whether you want to be helped by dr. human or dr. robot, probably almost no one will choose the latter. This is a shame, because there are so many good things ‘non-physical’ robots can do for patients, sometimes even better than the doctors themselves. IBM Watson is a good example of this, but even some real-life robots can already do great things without it being something people should be (made) afraid of.
One of my favorite examples is Alice, a care robot developed by VU University & Deloitte which helps elderly patients to take their medication, helps to avoid loneliness, and many other things. If you’re interested in the ‘human side of dr. robot’ you can check out this video:)
Dear Dina,
Thank you for this interesting blog! You stated that the robots will treat patients even better when they will be fully developed. However, I am a little bit concerned when it comes to the lack of emotion of the robots. Do you think this could have a negative effect on the patient? I do see potential in surgical robots, but I think that human doctors and nurses are important to have a proper communication with the patient. Overall, I am excited to see these developments in the healthcare industry!
Kind Regards,
Ghofrane Bouaissaoui