Abstract 4366786: New Technological Adoption of Robotics into Healthcare Systems: Healthcare Provider Perspectives

Abstract

Background: While the implementation of robotics into daily healthcare task has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, the integration of robotics into routine clinical practice remains a challenge. We conducted a targeted survey to explore healthcare workers’ preferences and attitudes towards the integration of robotics into healthcare operations. Methods: We launched a prospective web-based survey over three months consisting of 16 questions in the English language, to hospital-based clinical and allied health workers. To understand and collect respondents’ preferences towards the implementation of robotics in healthcare, including safety, user-friendliness, autonomy, and accuracy as well as preferred robotic functions. Lickert scale responses were transformed into -1, 0 and 1 to facilitate further analysis. Results: A total of n=106 healthcare workers participated in the survey; complete data analysis for n=93 respondents was done. While the majority of respondents (78.50%, N=93) were aware of robotics in healthcare, half of the respondents (55.09%, n=93) have had no interaction with robots during their practice. Two-thirds (68.81%, N=93) of the respondents expressed that they will be comfortable in performing tasks where robots are involved. A third expressed that they would “hate the idea that robots or artificial intelligence were making judgments about things,” while the rest were unsure or disagreed. The majority expressed a preference for robotics in disinfection (77.42%, n=93), medical assistance and logistics (83.33%, n=93) and telemedicine (56.18%, n=93). Safety and accuracy ranked highly for disinfection, medical assistance and logistics. User-friendliness and accuracy ranked highly for telemedicine. A positive association between educational level and desired robotic features was observed. There were positive correlations between the respondents’ education level and preferences of features for robots implemented for disinfection (r=0.231, p=0.026), medical assistance and logistics (r=0.265, p=0.01) and telemedicine (r=0.270, p=0.0009) and specific preference for trustworthiness (r=0.265, p=0.01) for telemedicine, and provision of alerts (r=0.229, p=0.027) for medical assistance and logistics. Conclusion: The current lack of exposure to robots in healthcare highlights a key gap in technological adoption and also in workplace and cultural acceptance. Addressing this through a targeted deployment that addresses these perspectives might be helpful.