The Usher Institute is running a half-day event on robotics in healthcare on Wednesday 8th August.
Details are below. If you are interested in taking part, please email Hajar Mozaffar (Hajar.Mozaffar@ed.ac.uk). Please note that places are limited.
Robotics in Healthcare: Current issues and future trends
The emergence of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming industries around the world. Robot technologies are evolving exponentially, particularly as they converge with other functionalities such as AI to learn from their environment, from each other, and from humans. There is now also increasing automation of healthcare services, where robots have begun to solve individual aspects of human performance such as precision (e.g. surgical robots), logistic/mechanical tasks that do not require complex cognitive human input (e.g. service robots), and complex cognitive tasks (e.g. rehabilitation robots). However, there are increasing concerns relating to the effective integration of robots with their social environment in healthcare settings, particularly in relation to applications that not only augment but also replace human capabilities.
Aim: To explore existing and anticipated future opportunities and challenges (including social, technical, commercial, and legal) associated with integration of robotics in healthcare.
The Event: In a roundtable format, we would now like to work with industry and the healthcare sector to identify existing technical, sociotechnical, organisational, and regulatory challenges that may be hampering progress and to find approaches to potential solutions. Example sociotechnical challenges may be around negative perceptions of robots amongst healthcare professionals, reconfiguration of roles and responsibilities, and new ethical and legal challenges resulting from new technologies. We welcome submission of questions for discussion in the meeting. The challenges can be around different types of robots used in various settings such as surgical robots, devices used in pharmacy practices, robots for social care, rehabilitation robots (Program to follow).
Date: 8-Aug-2018
Attendees: We have confirmed attendance from NHS Scotland, IBM, and academics from The University of Edinburgh. We invite participants from industry, academia, and government to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration.
Expected outcomes: This event is expected to develop and enhance close and productive collaborations between industry and academia in order to address the technological, social, and organisational progress in tandem. The event will help to form a partnership between representatives of industry and academia with the intention of developing grant applications to identify opportunities and capture value from innovations in robotics and AI for healthcare purposes.
Organisers: Dr Hajar Mozaffar (The University of Edinburgh Business School) and Professor Aziz Sheikh and Dr Kathrin Cresswell (Usher Institute ).
Location: TBC, but likely to be in University of Edinburgh central area