Robot for Interactive Body Assistance (RIBA)is the first robot in the world that can hold the weight of a human, and it was created to aid hospitals suffering from a sharp decline in nurses. Since carrying and supporting the weight of patients strained a nurse’s back too much, many of them were forced to leave their jobs. Additionally, due to new medical technologies, the rapidly rising population resulted in a need for more nurses and not enough people to fill these jobs. RIBA solves this issue by bearing the weight of a patient and acting as an assistant to the staff member, resulting in a lower demand for nurses.
As the world’s first robot to bear the weight of a human, RIBA improves the hospital environment drastically. Economically, if RIBA were to be implemented on a large-scale, it could save a country 2.1 billion dollars on annual health care costs. Currently, hospitals must pay nurses more because of their immense workload, but RIBA lessens this burden. RIBA’s positive effect on society is its implementation of a more friendly hospital atmosphere. When the nurses are less mentally and physically stressed, it improves their hospitality. Finally, RIBA benefits our culture by decreasing the overall need for nurses, allowing potential nurses to choose professions that focus on in-depth medical technology development, such as a cure for cancer.
Although RIBA benefits hospitals immensely, it comes with a set of concerns as well. Its effects on society include patients, especially older ones, believing that a RIBA could make a mistake regarding a patient’s treatment. As these robots become more advanced, hospitals give them more responsibilities which could potentially be a matter of life or death for some patients. Additionally, RIBA could impact the economy because this more efficient system in hospitals increasing life expectancies of those in retirement, decreasing the GDP. Lastly, the effects on the culture could cause a shift towards less human to human interactions, decreasing our quality of life. Since the majority of hospital patients are elderly, the use of RIBA makes them feel too disconnected from their caretakers, and they feel as if they lose their dignity.
Such a drastic change in healthcare technology inevitably comes with as many drawbacks as benefits, but as we continue to advance, this may become an intergral part of future hospitals.
