Days after Meagan Brazil-Sheehan’s 6-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia, they were walking down the halls of UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center when they ran into Robin the Robot.
“Luca, how are you?” it asked in a high-pitched voice programmed to sound like a 7-year-old girl. “It’s been awhile.”
Brazil-Sheehan said they had only met the 4-foot-tall (1.2-meter-tall) robot with a large screen displaying cartoonlike features once before after they were admitted several days earlier.
“His face lit up,” she said about the interaction in June in Worcester, Massachusetts. “It was so special because she remembered him.”
Robin is an artificial intelligence -powered therapeutic robot programed to act like a little girl as it provides emotional support at nursing homes and hospital pediatric units while helping combat staffing shortages. Five years after launching in the U.S., it has become a familiar face in 30 health care facilities in California, Massachusetts, New York and Indiana.
“Nurses and medical staff are really overworked, under a lot of pressure, and unfortunately, a lot of times they don’t have capacity to provide engagement and connection to patients,” said Karen Khachikyan, CEO of Expper Technologies, which developed the robot. “Robin helps to alleviate that part from them.”
As AI increasingly becomes a part of daily life, it’s found a foothold in medical care — providing everything from note-taking during exams to electronic nurses. While heralded by some for the efficiency it brings, others worry about its impact on patient care.
Robin is about 30% autonomous, while a team of operators working remotely controls the rest under the watchful eyes of clinical staff. Khachikyan said that with each interaction, they’re able to collect more data — while still complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA — and get closer to it being able to function independently.
“Imagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We’re trying to create that,” he said, referencing the 2008 animated film.
Making its rounds
On a recent Friday, a staff member at HealthBridge Children’s Hospital in Orange County, California, read off a list of patients she needed Robin to visit, along with the amount of time to spend with each one.
