Sunday, December 20, 2009

Robots to Replace Doctors


In New Zealand, researchers are getting quite excited at creating robots that will replace Dr’s and some of their lower tasks to keep their workload smaller. The robots will be programmed with the ability to take blood pressure, heart beat and helping patients in letting them know what’s happening and why they are waiting around for hours on end with no answers from the Dr’s.

A new robotic research lab was opened in Auckland which will provide the path to a more automated health service. These robots will be able to interact with patients as they use speech recognition tools to communicate allowing the patients to feel “more at ease” with these robots. $1.8 million has been put forwards for this research along side another 3.7 mil from the Korean side who is working on this joint project.

I am not convinced about this though. Would you really want a robot walking or rolling up to you and introducing it’s self as your Dr? I think it will be a while before I’d trust the system.

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