The introduction of robotically-assisted medical care, specifically home healthcare robots, have the potential to bring considerable positive change, not only to immediacy and accuracy of medical care, but to healing the disassociated family structure that is common in many American families, by encouraging multi-generational homes, and bringing the village back to the raising of children[2][4]. Japan, with the oldest population in the world, with ~30% of the Japanese population over 65 and 1 in 10 over the age of 80[1][3], has been building their home healthcare robotics industry for more than a decade. Another emerging market for the home healthcare robotics industry is Western Europe where the over-65 population is projected to reach1 in 3 people over the age of 65 - estimated to total more than 170 million people - by 2050. Both of these maturing markets have been active since the mid-2010s, and the infrastructure rails were being laid a decade before that.
It is not difficult to see what is attractive about this technology and why artificial medical caregivers will become a common cultural and household fixture. It is an unfortunate custom of our culture to rely on extended care facilities. It is an opinion for which I can post no citation or back up with any facts. I just know that I hate it. To offer another opinion: two of the main blockers to ending this custom and bringing the wisdom and empathy of our senior family members back into our lives and homes, is that we are afraid. We are afraid that we will mix up their medication, or allow them to mess it up. Falling is a real life-taking risk for the elderly, and for this we are justifiably afraid. And we do not want to be responsible for attending to some of the less pleasant medical assisting tasks. All of these are valid concerns, and in large part, understandable fears. Some suggest having home-bound medical care, but this comes with its own packaged complexities including ballooning costs as age increases, and regularly letting someone who is essentially a stranger into our innermost safe spaces.
It will take considerable improvements, both in technology and cultural empathy, for the level ubiquitous adoption it would take to instill the kinds of change of which I dream. There are a myriad of other challenges including empathy-aware artificial intelligences, and defining and training the human-in-the-loop infrastructure, but the technology IS coming. The manufacturing machine is already in place, artificial intelligence is advancing at plaid-painted ludicrous speed, and age demographics all around the world are accelerating upward. The question will not when home healthcare robotics become common and indispensable, but how we ever did without them once they get here.
RReferences
- Japan’s elderly population rises to record 36.25 million. Al Jazeera, September 16, 2024.↩
- Khaksar, W., Saplacan, D., Bygrave, L. A., & Torresen, J. (2023). Robotics in Elderly Healthcare: A review of 20 recent research projects. arXiv. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2302.04478↩
- More than 1 in 10 people in Japan are aged 80 or over. World Economic Forum, June 3, 2025.↩
- Sawik, B., et al. (2023). Robots for Elderly Care: Review, Multi-Criteria Optimization Model and Qualitative Case Study. Healthcare, 11(9), 1286. doi:10.3390/healthcare11091286↩