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Key points on why is beneficial to include robotics in healthcare facilities.
Benefits
Cost
Although it might seem counter-intuitive to spend significant sums of money on robotics in healthcare with the aim of making healthcare universally cheaper, this is exactly what could happen given investment, both in public and private healthcare settings. Robots can improve patient care and reduce costs in the long-term, meaning both public and private healthcare systems will benefit in terms of patient care and finances. This isn’t to say that efforts won’t need to be made in order to effect such change: the initial capital expenditure on equipment, ongoing maintenance and training will still need to be factored in, as well as upgrading the robots themselves.
Labour is a major part of healthcare costs. Among hospitals, labour is typically the largest sum allocated on hospital’s budget and accounts for almost 60% of non capital costs.
Health plans and life sciences companies also employ many people, with a variety of jobs. Some of these are highly focused on complex and innovative work, but many of these have aspects that are routine and repetitive. It is through automating that health service professionals will finally be able to focus on the strictly qualitative aspects of business. Robots could make us less robotic.
Sanitation
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of robotics-based healthcare solutions is the reduced incidence of transmitted infection between patients and healthcare professionals. This applies not just to surgery but also to more routine procedures like dispensing pharmaceuticals and disinfecting medical devices and equipment. Robots reduced the role of fomites (inanimate objects which can lead to infection) in the spread of disease while maintaining the quality of the healthcare system. This is an indispensable part of a modern healthcare system.
Quality of Life
An interesting benefit of robotics within health services that is easy to overlook is enabling people to remain in their own homes for longer by automating core tasks or even being programmed with AI to ‘converse’ with patients to ease their loneliness. This application of robotics could reduce the need for hospitalisation in many instances, thus opening up availability for beds and lowering operational costs for hospitals and care facilities.
Better Healthcare
Advanced robotics will simply lead to better yet lower-cost health services in the healthcare industry. In fact, it can dramatically alter how people receive healthcare. Lower-cost healthcare enabled by advanced robotics will have a democratising effect for the entire world's population. And by reducing the spread of infection which leads to even further associated costs and by liberating medical staff from repetitive tasks in order to refocus on value-adding services, applying robotics in hospitals could herald the beginning of a dramatically more affordable system of healthcare for everyone..
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