All around the world hospitals and other business ventures are using robots to help during the COVID pandemic. Professor Djitt Laowattana of the Institute of Field Robotics (FIBO) reportedly told his staff to focus on designing a robot for Thailand’s many medical facilities.
Together with his team of engineers and students, Laowattana created the FIBO Against Covid-19 (FACO). The group of autonomous robots will assist doctors and nurses in fighting the coronavirus by disinfecting rooms and cleaning, delivering supplies and remotely monitoring patients. To include taking their temperature and checking for symptoms of the virus.
The robots have 5G connectivity so that hospitals do not overload their systems. Thailand’s government announced last year that they would be providing an 8-year tax break for manufacturers of medical robots and encouraged hospitals to use the medical robots.
Only 3 hospitals have received the robots so far due to government funding delays, the rest are still awaiting approval of funds. Delays with shipping of parts from other countries during the pandemic have also proved to be an issue.
What do you think? Will we see a mass push of hospital automated robots in Thailand? Or is it a plan that, like Covid-19, has come and gone already?
While a baby blue eyed robot that checks you over may sound like a good thing, it also brings some question into mind. Are the hospital prices going to go up or down because of the new robots? Personally, I want a human helping me if I am paying for treatment. These aren’t the droids I’m looking for.
I definitely don’t want some human doctor speaking to me through some television screen. Knowing that he is right in the other room controlling the robot would be more annoying than anything else.
How does everyone else feel about it? Are you cool with SkyNet taking over your healthcare, or do you doubt that we’ll ever even see one of these robots before they are tucked in a closet gathering dust?
Source: https://restofworld.org/2020/the-man-trying-to-automate-thailands-hospitals/
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