Person-friendly robot interaction: social, psychological and technological impacts in health care work

Abstract

a aAbstractThis paper explores social, psychological and technological impacts of surgical robot applications in health care environments. The introduction of novel medical and surgical robot technologies is changing the practice of medicine. The aim is to analyze how technological, social and psychological factors mutually affect person-friendly robot interaction, including the major determinants of utility, usability, and acceptability. The empirical inquiry consists of a qualitative case study of professional clinicians in two medical departments that have been studied through interviews, observations and examination of written records. As the study shows, interfaces of surgical robots should harmonize to the characteristics of human users. The appropriate allocation of tasks and capabilities between the robot, the surgeon, assistant surgeons and other members in the operation team proves to be a dilemma. The design of separate approaches to the social and technical systems of HRI is not sufficient. Instead, the proper technology is the one that best fits the entire situation.

Acceptance of Healthcare Robots for the Older Population: Review and Future Directions

“…Preliminary research has shown that reactions of staff to healthcare robots can be mixed. Wasen showed that assistant surgeons sometimes feel robotic surgery isolates them from the head robotic surgeon, and are annoyed that the bulky surgical robots can be difficult to move around during surgery [54]. A study of nurses' reactions to an automated medication dispensing system showed that many nurses were distrustful of the technology, they had unrealistic expectations, and felt that their job security was threatened [55].…”

“…Breazeal made the social robot Kismet small to encourage a caring, protective response from humans [71]. The surgical robots Zeus and da Vinci are large, but can sometimes get in the way of the assistant surgeons [54]. Most older people have expressed a preference for a small robot in a home setting [34].…”

Replacement of Highly Educated Surgical Assistants by Robot Technology in Working Life: Paradigm Shift in the Service Sector

“…Although robotics is well established as a research field, there has been relatively little work on the social and organizational effects of this type of replacement. This study relates to healthcare robotics [1,2] and highlights social, organizational and societal impacts of service robots [3,4].…”

“…Social acceptance is a fundamental issue and a key challenge for successful adoption of robot technology [7][8][9][10], including within organizations in the service sector such as health care [2,11]. Clearly, there is a growing need for research on the impact of robots on social and organizational life.…”

Robots to make you happy

“…Similarly, Wasén explored user-friendliness of surgical robots in a qualitative case study of professional clinicians. For example, he found that personfriendly interactions were usually designed to support the operating surgeon but not the other members of the operation team [124].…”