A Hospital in England is Now Using a Robot

AI and robotics have been a major concern of late. People are starting to worry that many of the day-to-day tasks in a variety of industries that provide people with jobs are going to be automated, which will eliminate those jobs for humans.

That concern may prove to be valid in time, but the benefits of robots are simply too good for many industries to pass on, and hospitals are certainly included.

In a hospital in Whitehaven, Cumbria, England, a robot is being used to free up precious staff bandwidth that can be allocated toward patients in need.

Let’s take a look at how this robot works, what sort of tasks it can perform, and why it’s so helpful.

West Cumberland Hospital’s New Robot

West Cumberland has invested a hefty amount into its new robot—£350,000 (around $436,000 USD), which will work in the hospital’s pharmacy department. Just based on that, you might wonder, why not invest that money into people who need jobs who are capable of doing the work?

To start, it can organize medicines and fill prescriptions at a much higher volume and far faster than any human can. This will expedite orders and increase the amount that can be filled at a time.

West Cumberland has partner hospitals and pharmacies that rely on them for their medications. These partners will also benefit from West Cumberland’s increase in capacity to deliver. This could also open doors for West Cumberland for new partnerships with other pharmacies and hospitals.

Where Else Are Robotics Being Used in Hospitals?

West Cumberland Hospital is not the only one to start adopting robots to perform hospital tasks. A hospital in Bristol, England is also making use of robots in a variety of ways to free up more staff bandwidth.

And another in Lincoln has created robot to assist in surgeries for certain types of cancer.

We can expect this trend to continue and that more and more hospitals and healthcare centers will use robots to free up staff to do more important things. In an industry where hospitals are frequently understaffed, any help is usually welcome.

And if there’s anything that the pandemic taught us, is that face to face interactions can be a risk under certain circumstances. Robots could some day be the ones that people who are sick see first to perform tests and make sure they’re not contagious.

Should We Be Concerned About Robots Replacing Jobs?

Elon Musk has spoken about the dangers of AI openly and the need for universal basic income in the future when many if not most jobs will be replaced by AI and robots. However, things are not so cut and dry when it comes the robot workers of the future and where they fit into our society.

There are a lot of question marks about how these robots will be integrated and what impact they might have. But for now, it seems obvious enough that it will all start with automation of the most basic tasks and robots that can carry out simply actions efficiently and cheaply.

As things progress though, we will undoubtably face a crisis for workers in some industries that can easily and more efficiently make use of AI and robots to complete work. Many people will lose their jobs and need to find something else.

With that said, we can only hope that Elon Musk is right and that the world economy and society as a whole will self-correct and create a balanced future that has enough room for both advanced and intelligent robots, and the average Joe and Jane.