3/24/2005

Will Robots replace our regular doctors?

A recent article found at, http://biz.yahoo.com/special/hospital05_article2.html, expounds on the idea and actual implementation of robot doctors. A wireless Web link allows the doctor to fire up the robot from anywhere, using a laptop and a joystick to drive it through the hospital.
Does this not sound a little bizarre or even worth ones time of going to the hospital only to see the Doctors face on the screen of a robot? Would it be worth the cost you pay to not have human interaction? According to numerous people who have had experience with the new innovation, before they see it, they're resistant to the idea, but once they see that it's just like communicating with a real person, their opinion changes radically.
Will this change the way our healthcare operates as we now know it? It may save some time and allow the doctors to be more than one place at a time, but is this worth the benefit that is lost from communicating personally-human face to human face?

4 comments:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 for a poorly formatted link in Stockton's post.

I'm quite sure this will work out just fine. A generation ago people were sure that ATM's would fail. More pertinently, think about the amount of class discussion we do through blogging - which is really pretty impersonal.

Ann must have good doctors. The most common complaint of patients about doctors is their poor communications skills.

Anonymous said...

i disagree with Ron. All it takes to complete replace doctors is a robot with humanoid limbs with a doctor (retired doctors are more likely to co-operate) and a programmer working together.

Why do we need human interaction with doctors anyway? If you are in pain, it would be much better to have a 5 second analysis and treatment with a AI robot, than a 15 - 30 minute consultation with a doctor. Also computers do not make mistakes. Human doctors do, very frequently. And even more importantly, I'd rather have have all our doctor working in research finding a cure for diseases such as cancer, than doing diagnostics and surgery which is better done by robots.

I can guarantee that Robots will eventually replace all doctors, as well as almost all other non-creative jobs. It just takes some time, that's all.

MEDstudent said...

robot doctors should be used in diagnostics as soon as possible!

MEDstudent said...

i think, that we should start using robots in diagnostics at least in 2018 and believe me, it is possible with enough funding.
From my experience, i can say that it is much more important that more doctors were in basic and clinical research!