For millennia, humans have leveraged the awesome power of technology not only to improve the quality but the quantity of their years. From ancient humans’ first discovery of stone tools to modern humanity’s innovations in biotechnology, advancements in technology have proven instrumental in increasing longevity.
Among the most important of these innovations in increasing the human lifespan is robotics. Today, robots can be seen performing a vast array of healthcare functions, from patient monitoring and triage to bedside patient care to microsurgery. Let’s examine the unique and critical role of robots in increasing the longevity of humans.
The Advent of Health Chatbots
The ongoing labor shortage has taken a tremendous toll on many industries, but perhaps nowhere has the impact been greater or more dangerous than in healthcare. In recent years, however, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have enabled the rise and proliferation of health chatbots,
Health chatbots are designed to directly engage with patients and caregivers, addressing patients’ questions and concerns while using Big Data analytics to triage the sick and injured. This helps to alleviate the impact of the health labor shortage on healthcare workers and patients alike.
By engaging with patients and performing preliminary patient assessments online, chatbots free healthcare providers to attend to direct patient care. Because healthcare providers are less likely to suffer from overwork, they’re more likely to be able to deliver more effective, empathic, and timely care.
In addition, the impact of chatbots on patients engaging with them is likely to be just as significant and just as positive. AI-powered chatbots are uniquely capable of triaging patients effectively based on preliminary differential diagnoses. This means that patients with significant health concerns are more likely to receive the prompt care they need.
Robotics As the Fountain of Youth?
Not only are robotics proving highly useful in patient diagnosis and triage, but they’re also showing tremendous promise in combating the scourge of age-related illnesses. For example, biomedical researchers are making enormous strides in anti-aging therapeutics operating at the cellular, genetic, and molecular levels.
These include technologies to reprogram and revitalize cells, reengineer genetic mutations, and lengthen telomeres, which protect chromosomes and prevent cellular destruction. Robotics is an essential tool in these microscopic interventions. This includes enabling gene splicing to deliver genetic materials through the use of nanoparticles designed to catalyze an anti-aging cellular response.
Robots at the Bedside
In addition to the state-of-the-art innovations currently underway in the arena of bioengineering, robotics are also serving a more humble, but no less important, role at the patients’ bedside. In hospitals and clinics around the world, robotic assistants are delivering meals and medications, tidying patient rooms, and performing other basic care functions.
The same is true for patients in retirement communities and for seniors or persons with disabilities wishing to remain in their own homes. These caregiving robots don’t just enhance health and quality of life for the patients they serve, but, once again, they play a critical role in mitigating the effects of the health labor shortage.
This means that less critical patients still have access to the care they need and can be continuously monitored through both ambulatory robotic systems and wearable health monitors. The result is a decreased likelihood that nascent health challenges will go undetected and untreated, leading to disease progression and complications. Thus, these patients enjoy healthier and longer lives.
Because these robot assistants both aid in patient care and contribute to decreased demand for more advanced health services, the burden on the health system as a whole declines. As a result, doctors and nurses have more time and resources to dedicate to the patients who need them most, which also increases human longevity.
Robotics in Health Science Education
As has been seen, robotics now plays a preeminent role in patient care, medical research, and health technology innovation. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that should also feature heavily in health science education and STEM education in general.
Now more than ever, it’s imperative for students in the health sciences to master robotics, both as a learning tool and as preparation for their deployment in professional practice. Aspiring doctors and nurses may practice their clinical skills on a robotic patient before actually laying hands on a real one. Surgeons, likewise, may train in the use of robotics for microsurgery.
The Takeaway
Robotics is far more than the stuff of science fiction. Now more than ever, robotic technologies are playing a vital role in increasing human longevity. Health chatbots, for example, are helping to speed diagnoses and facilitate patient triage while relieving some of the burden caused by the health labor shortage. This dramatically increases the efficiency and effectiveness of patient care, thus increasing lifespan. In addition, state-of-the-art robotics are being used to support the development of anti-aging therapies that operate on the genetic, molecular, and cellular levels. Robotic assistants are also being used in direct patient care in hospitals, clinics, retirement facilities, and even private homes. This, again, serves to decrease the burden on the healthcare system by reducing the consumption of services and increasing the overall health and functioning of the patients. Finally, robots are increasingly prominent in health education, from allowing medical and nursing students to practice their clinical skills to training surgeons to perform robot-assisted surgery.
