Could robots provide emotional support to children in hospitals?

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes part of everyday life, it is also finding a role in health care.

At a children’s hospital in the US state of Massachusetts, a therapeutic robot named Robin roams the wards, checking in on young patients.

Standing 1.2 metres tall, Robin has a sleek, white, triangular body that was designed, its developers say, for hugging.

“Luca, how are you? It’s been a while,” Robin asked a six-year-old boy with leukaemia that the robot had met once before when it spotted him in the corridor.

Robin is designed to act and sound like a 7-year-old girl. Its developers say it can provide emotional support for children in long-term care, who are often facing painful procedures.

"The primary goal of Robin is to comfort patients during their stay in medical facilities and provide engagement, entertainment, and emotional support," said Karén Khachikyan, Expper Technologies’s chief executive.

“Imagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We’re trying to create that,” Khachikyan added, referencing the 2008 animated film.

When Luca needed an IV line, child life specialist Micaela Cotas brought Robin into the hospital room.

Cotas showed him the equipment and explained what was about to happen. Then Robin played a cartoon of itself having an IV put in.

“It helps [to] show that Robin has gone through those procedures as well, just like a peer,” Cotas said.

A growing presence

The robot has been part of the care team at UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center since 2020.

Five years after its launch in the United States, Robin is now a familiar presence in around 30 health care facilities in California, Massachusetts, New York, and Indiana.

It has also been introduced in elderly care, where its developers say it acts like a grandchild. In nursing homes, Robin plays memory games with people living with dementia, guides them through breathing exercises, and offers companionship.

Khachikyan recalled an instance last year when Robin calmed a woman at a Los Angeles care facility who was suffering a panic attack by playing Elvis Presley songs and videos of puppies, reminding her of her favourites.

Tackling staff shortages

The robot is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) but is not yet fully autonomous.

Most of the time,  remote operators control it under the watchful eyes of clinical staff. It performs about 30 per cent of its tasks autonomously and is gathering data, such as recordings of interaction with patients. 

Each interaction generates data that developers say is collected in line with US health privacy laws, helping the robot get closer to functioning independently.

Expper Technologies stresses that Robin is not intended to replace staff, but to support them and help ease workforce shortages. Short staffing in healthcare systems is a global issue and hospitals in Europe are also looking into hiring robot assistants.

During health care workers' strikes in 2023, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) looked into deploying helper robots at the country’s hospitals to help ease the burden on staff.

Future developments include enabling Robin to measure patients’ vital signs and share the information with medical teams, according to Expper Technologies.

Longer-term plans involve designing the robot to help elderly people with daily tasks such as dressing and using the bathroom.

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