Are carebots ’empathetic’ enough to replace human doctors?
Technical and ethical problems
Adopting the evidence that positive messages help patients in the digital age is both technically and ethically problematic. While some of the components of a positive message (“this drug will make you feel better soon”) can be straightforwardly delivered through a mobile phone, via a video call, or even by a carebot, it seems to be inherently problematic for others. For example, the feeling that someone has authority might come from their title (doctor), which is presumably the same whether the doctor is seen in person or over the telephone.
But studies show authority alsocomes from body language. It’s more difficult to display body language through a telephone or video. While carebots may be able to convey their authority – and they have been shown to displaysufficiently sophisticated body languageto evoke certain emotions – real humans move differently. Adapting what we know about authoritative messages for the digital age is not straightforward. Somestudies revealthat while digitally assisted consultations do not seem to be harmful, they are different (usually shorter), and we don’t know if they are as effective.
Also, to make the positive message personal to a patient (another component of positive messages) it might be important topick up on subtle cuessuch as a downward glance or awkward pause, which studies have shown can be important for making accurate diagnoses. These cues may be more difficult to read through a telephone call, let alone by a carebot – at least for now.
These are not just technical problems, they are ethical too. If digitally assisted healthcare consultations are not as effective at delivering positive messages, which, in turn, result in better care, then they threaten to violate the ethical requirement to help patients. Of course, if a carebot can do things more cheaply or to more people (they might not need to sleep), it might balance things out. But weighing the different ethical issues needs to be evaluated carefully, and this has not been done.
For carebots, this raises other ethical and even existential issues. If being empathic and caring is a key component of an effectively delivered positive message, it is important to know whether carebots are capable of caring. While we know that robots can beperceived as caring and empathic, it is not the same thing as being caring. Itmay not matterto some patients whether empathy is feigned or real as long as they benefit, but again, this needs to be fleshed out rather than assumed. Researchers areaware of these (and other) ethical issuesand have called for a framework to regulate the design of carebots.
The study of positive messages shows that the new ethical frameworks would benefit from incorporating the latest evidence about the complexity of effective, positive – and other types of – communication. At the end of such a serious analysis, it may turn out that digitally assisted healthcare consultations and carebots areas good as face-to-face consultations.
They could even be better in some cases (some people may feel more comfortable telling intimate secrets to a robot than to a human). What is certain is that they are different, and we currently do not know what the implications of those differences are for optimizing the benefits of complex positive messages in healthcare.
This article is republished fromThe ConversationbyJeremy Howick, Director of the Oxford Empathy Programme,University of Oxfordunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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