Toward a Science of Autonomy for Physical Science: Healthcare
📝 Abstract
In Star Wars Episode V, we see Luke Skywalker being repaired by a surgical robot. In the context of the movie, this doesn’t seem surprising or disturbing. After all, it is a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It would never happen here. Or could it? Would we accept a robot as our doctor, our surgeon, or our in-home care specialist? Imagine walking into an operating room and no one was there. You are instructed to lie down on the operating table, and the OR system takes over. Would you feel comfortable with this possible future world?
💡 Analysis
In Star Wars Episode V, we see Luke Skywalker being repaired by a surgical robot. In the context of the movie, this doesn’t seem surprising or disturbing. After all, it is a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It would never happen here. Or could it? Would we accept a robot as our doctor, our surgeon, or our in-home care specialist? Imagine walking into an operating room and no one was there. You are instructed to lie down on the operating table, and the OR system takes over. Would you feel comfortable with this possible future world?
📄 Content
Toward a Science of Autonomy for Physical Systems: Healthcare
Gregory Hager hager@cs.jhu.edu Johns Hopkins University Eric Horvitz horvitz@microsoft.com Microsoft
Computing Community Consortium Version 1: June 29, 20151
In Star Wars Episode V, we see Luke Skywalker being repaired by a surgical robot. In the context of the movie, this doesn’t seem surprising or disturbing. After all, it is a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It would never happen here. Or could it? Would we accept a robot as our doctor, our surgeon, or our in-‐home care specialist? Imagine walking into an operating room and no one was there. You are instructed to lie down on the operating table, and the OR system takes over. Would you feel comfortable with this possible future world?
While we’re happy to entertain the idea that autonomous systems will grow our food, build our buildings, and drive us to work, somehow the idea that autonomous physical agents may one day provide key healthcare services seems harder to envision or accept. One might argue that it is our relative unfamiliarity with healthcare that creates this feeling. We drive our car every day and have an understanding of how cars work, but we never take out an appendix. Perhaps the realities of medical interventions are just too far from our experience to understand how autonomous robotic systems might enhance our healthcare. Two aspects of healthcare may make it hard to imagine robotic systems playing an important role in medicine:
• Healthcare is personal: Robots and computers are good at doing the same thing over and over again, but everyone is different. How could an autonomous system ever be trusted to do the right thing for me?
• Healthcare is social: Medicine is seated deeply in social constructs; it is people taking care of people. It is not just about data and diagnosis, but about understanding the whole person and responding to their needs.
1 Contact: Ann Drobnis, Director, Computing Community Consortium (202-‐266-‐2936, adrobnis@cra.org). For the most recent version of this essay, as well as related essays, please visit: cra.org/ccc/resources/ccc-‐led-‐white-‐papers
It is not hard to see that most people’s response to the autonomous surgical suite is probably some combination of both elements. We want the comfort of knowing we are being treated as a person by a person.
So, where do these reflections take us? They suggest that a key goal in developing autonomous systems in healthcare should be to use autonomy to enhance the human experience. Autonomous systems can enhance the quality of human-‐human engagement by reducing repetitive and unrewarding activities, by making the use of people when they are most effective, and by making the healthcare organization a more people-‐friendly place. In what follows, we describe several ways that autonomy can enhance the quality, effectiveness, and cost of healthcare—and we note where some of these innovations are already underway2
Healthcare as a Service Industry
The goal of healthcare is to serve patients by providing high quality and effective care. Where
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