#1
Nasty but funny. Wait for the inevitable backlash.

It's not as friendly as Hattie Jacques ...

Anything that takes pressure off the N.H.S. is bound to be a good idea. It is the fault of this and prior governments that it's in the state it is. I'm sure those stupid nurses (#1!) will be heartily appreciative of the fact that they no longer have to perform the most mundane of their duties.

I thought that was what was manning the NHS helplines at the moment.
Protocol driven and not thinking outside the box!

#5 You've got it in one.

S'long as they were short skirts and suspenders, it's fine by me!

Owww!! My wife just slapped me! She's a nurse..........

Hope they're not doing endoscopies!!!

That's good Dave - she'll be able to look after that black eye she's going to give you if you give her any more lip!

Don't I know it AD!

I love technology and I reckon this would be a great little gadget, the only problem is it won't be used to aid nurses, it'll be used to replace them. The NHS is in a budget crisis, whats the solution thats always used? cut beds, cut nurses. The only thing more vital than the above is the doctors. With a partner who's training to be a nurse it makes me edgy.

Questions;

Any idea when the Robonurse will be doing the injections?

Will we be seeing a strongarm Robonurse in A&E for the weekend drunks?

And finally, how soon do the disgnostic Robonurses take over from the doctors??

I think it's time for me to start my health & fitness regime I promised myself in my New Year resolutions!

Just what we'll all need when we have a jet-pack accident, crash our hover cars or choke on our food pills.

Great idea! The cost of running a couple of these, with support, helpdesk, engineers, programmers not to mention project managers, consultants, blue-sky thinkers, out-of-the-box thinkers - we're really going to save much needed NHS cash.

Wouldn’t it be better if Thomas Schlegel and his team initially tested this idea by developing a robotic replacement for all politicians?

This is not a good idea, reason: worked a project for a hospital here stateside, lower 48, they installed a robot to deliver pharm's. the project was retired quitely after one year. The robot had to be checked manually on every delivery to the different floors, it had a continous failure rate of between 10 and 30 per cent on matching patient to pills and solutions. This was with a prepackaged inventory system. It is cheaper to hire a pharm tech, and more accurate. The decision was made to minimize liability, they sue hospitals over here for mistakes.

When they start building enough of these to bring down the cost we will see retirement homes full of them.

#17: Just scrap them when they're too old. No need for homes. :o)

All we need now is a robot in government!

Think that's already happened #19

Sure this makes loads of since.

Spend 15 - 60 million developing a robot that will cost the hospital 50 thousand a piece, providing very limited functionality that could just as easily be provided by a non-paid volunteer.

Add that to the fact that you have to maintain them, swapping out expensive batteries and installing critical software updates, adds to your current IT staffs work load and requires the hiring of expensive engineers.

Plus they tend to break down quite often. Here in the states we used to have quite a few of these robots in our factories, and they where a real fad in the 80’s. But where quietly fazed out due the fact that they where prone to breakdowns and did not provide significant return on inverstment.

Sure this makes loads of since.

Spend 15 - 60 million developing a robot that will cost the hospital 50 thousand a piece, providing very limited functionality that could just as easily be provided by a non-paid volunteer.

Add that to the fact that you have to maintain them, swapping out expensive batteries and installing critical software updates, adds to your current IT staffs work load and requires the hiring of expensive engineers.

Plus they tend to break down quite often. Here in the states we used to have quite a few of these robots in our factories, and they where a real fad in the 80’s. But where quietly fazed out due the fact that they where prone to breakdowns and did not provide significant return on inverstment.

Dumb American, 21
The Japanese have kept theirs because theirs are not prone to breakdown and do provide a good return on investment

The three laws of robotics, according to Isaac Asimov;

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Unless it accidentally sticks the needle in your eye instead of your arse.....

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Unless it's programs have anything to do with Microsoft, in which case it must "validate" it is running a "genuine copy of windows" before it decides upon conflict.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Unless the local council decides it should pay robot council tax, upon which it will self destruct.....

Advantages:
Robot nurses can be abused by patients' demanding relatives and airhead doctors, still would not say a word. Who would sue a Robot nurse for malpractice? Greedy lawyers have no more business.
Disadvantages:
"It" can not do real nurses' tasks that involve feelings and emotions. Real nurses do not clean floor and deliver hospital food, so Robots can do these. Robots also need to learn how to change soiled linen and turn obese patients.

http://miarn.sf.net is an open source project that does that today.

Surely. thet are already here in the NHS. made in the EU.

these robots are replacing housekeeping, volunteers and unit clerks.

i'd love to see it smack a 14g in you when you're bleeding out after surgery. i'd love to see it do cpr and intubate an airway. i'd love to see it mix up an insulin drip and monitor dka. i'd love to see it get an ngt down grandma. i'd sell tickets to see it run the dialysis machine and i'd put it on the cover of time magazine if it could lift these 300 pound people out of bed to go to xray!!!

>EYEROLL<
ps, in the us it is illegal to call yourself a nurse unless you passed the boards.

Cost issues aside (and agreed, I am not convinced of their cost-effectiveness), I don't see these as official "nurses" or in any way degrading the status of nurses or an insult to their skills.

The way they are being promoted is as an aid to help take away some of the burden on nurses and other care-givers, freeing them up for more time with patients - for which I suppose they got into that field in the first place.

And let's not discount the value of a bio-hazard cleanup done by something that can't get sick from it (assuming it is done well).

I think the term "nurse" is misused here and I assume that is the point in #28 above.

A bigger concern is what it will take to get the programming to be reliable so the units don't have to be followed to make sure they are doing their jobs well, and how much that will cost. Should probably run on Linux....

And the legal risk is truly non-zero. It is not that you can't sue a robot, it's that you can sue a hospital that relies on a robot that ends up harming a patient. Maybe they should leave the injection and medication dispensing part out for a bit.