• Question: Tonia: How would you combat unemployment if the NHS depended on robotics and a few specialists? How can you justify using robotics when thousands of people would be at risk of poverty, unemployment and mental health issues?

    Asked by Cake127map to Tonia on 17 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Tonia Tzemanaki

      Tonia Tzemanaki answered on 17 Jun 2019:

      The goal of using robotics in the NHS is not to replace nurses, doctors or surgeons. It is to assist them to do their job better. This way, robotics can help NHS cut down on costs and improve the efficiency of their employees, taking some of their load off giving a better experience to patients and to clinicians.
      For example, when patients undergo robot-assisted surgery, it is reported that they leave the hospital sooner (within the day or the day after) and return to their life much faster than they do with other types of surgery. This makes the NHS save on costs of having a patient taking a bed for a week (or longer in some cases). Not just costs, but also a bed to be taken up by another patient. Hopefully this way, NHS long waiting time for treatment can be reduced.

Comments

  • Photo: Sam

    Sam commented on :

    This is a really good question, and it is really important that people understand why people wouldn’t lose their jobs because of robots. This isn’t the same situation as the Luddites during the industrial revolution, but I can see why it looks like that from the outside. Great answer Tonia 🙂

  • Photo: Ejay

    Ejay commented on :

    Very good question and a fitting response by Tonia. The manufacturing sector also had the same concern during the steady introduction of automation, AI and robotics into the workplace. I always like to say it’s more of an assistive and complementary mechanism to aid in decision support , streamline efficiency and so on-but definitely not a ploy to make people redundant or replace human beings as far as my knowledge extends.