Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The Robot Will See You Now


The headline by the AP was "Robots' use in emergency room being studied" but my local paper only gave this abbreviated tale of engineers playing around at Vanderbilt. My internet search didn't show any more info. What a sad piece of reporting. I am sure the AP reporter did a bigger story but it was chopped up into this small nugget of nothing. Suffice it to say here is the big ending in the article:

Officials said robots could shorten the wait time for patients, relieve the strain on overburdened emergency room staff and reduce mistakes.

Robots would treat patients with non-life-threatening conditions.


There just seems to be a ton of jokes for this. I could see robots in the future sitting around the robot lounge exchanging war stories about the patients who are driving them crazy.
Anyway, on a serious note, does anyone see anything ironic about this? Replace the word "robots" with midlevel providers. That was how it was first used. This is not a criticism (though I am sure I will get hammered again) but rather an explanation how the people in charge are always trying to replace us.