After COVID-19 and the resulting pandemic exposed shortcomings in the global senior care system, a lot of questions have been raised about ways that the system itself can be improved. No one wants to ever see elderly folk suffer for a lack of proper assistance. The things we learned about flaws in the system should be resolved so no one needs to suffer like that again.
Because of this, a lot of eyes have turned toward what’s been going on in Japan when it comes to automating senior care with the use of technology and even care robots.
Japan has been creating robots to assist with the senior care process for several years. Even though this technology has been improved upon drastically over the years, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. And although some improvement is certainly possible when it comes to technology like this, a robot cannot ever come close to the care that a human can provide. That doesn’t make care robots like what we are seeing developed in Japan a bad move. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. A care robot can do a lot of good, especially when it comes to improving upon the quality of care that people as a whole receive.
But even though these tech items have received a lot of time and attention in Japan, they’ve never really become popular or widely used. It’s important to look at the reasons why this is.
One big reason is expense. Robots are expensive. Regardless of the purpose and regardless of the size, robots in care technology are prohibitively costly when it comes to the average individual. Even though technology costs tend to go down as time goes by, these robots still are out of reach for the vast majority of people when it comes to price.
Acceptance is another factor. While some people tend to be more willing to accept the care of robots, like we have seen in parts of Japan, many people in other parts of the world are not as willing to rely on robotic care. Whatever the reasons for this cultural rift, it needs to be acknowledged that not everyone is going to want to have a robot helping with their care, regardless of how helpful they might actually be.
It might be that there’s still more design improvement and advances in technology needed before automated care can get to a point where there’s widespread appeal prior to being helpful. Maybe. But maybe the bigger reason why automated care hasn’t taken off is because it doesn’t have the capability of being helpful to the degree that it will ever be widely accepted. This is most likely the case.
There will always be leaps forward when it comes to technology and we should expect to see this when it comes to technology’s impact on senior care. But at the end of the day a robot cannot do everything. It’s possible to automate some parts of care, but never all of it.
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