Healthcare Workers' Point of View on Medical Robotics During COVID-19 Pandemic - A Scoping Review

Irma Ruslina Defi; Shelly Iskandar; Septiana Charismawati; Arjon Turnip; Dessy Novita

doi:10.2147/IJGM.S355734

Healthcare Workers' Point of View on Medical Robotics During COVID-19 Pandemic - A Scoping Review

Int J Gen Med. 2022 Apr 6:15:3767-3777. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S355734. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Irma Ruslina Defi¹, Shelly Iskandar², Septiana Charismawati¹, Arjon Turnip³, Dessy Novita³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Hasan Sadikin General Hospital/Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia.
² Department of Psychiatry, Hasan Sadikin General Hospital/Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran, Sumedang, Jawa Barat, Indonesia.

Abstract

COVID-19 affected how healthcare workers interact with patients. Medical technology and robotics are developed in hospital settings to limit human contact. The aim of this review is to elucidate what kind of medical robotics is required for healthcare workers during COVID-19 pandemic. This review was obtained from electronic databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, EBSCO, and Cochrane reviews were searched for articles using keywords such as "healthcare professional" OR "health worker" AND "COVID-19" AND "robot application" OR "robotics" OR "health technology" AND "needs assessment" OR "expectation" OR "perception" published during 2020 to 2021. Inclusion criteria were full-text articles related to assessment of healthcare workers' need for medical robotics during COVID-19 pandemics. Exclusion criteria included abstracts, duplicate articles, blogs, news articles, promotional brochures, and conference proceedings. A total of 13,692 articles were identified through the search engines (PubMed 179, Cochrane Library 1300, EBSCO 13, Google Scholar 12,200). Five full-text articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Determining robotic functions is important to healthcare workers who will be user of such medical technology. This review divided robotic functions into medical, operational, movement, and social functions. Healthcare workers' demands for robotics were also influenced by the types of robots, such as examination robots, robot-based sample test and medicine production, surgery and rehabilitation robots, disinfection and cleaning robots, delivery and logistic robot, telemedicine, and telepresence robots. Medical robotics is required for healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The highest demands for medical robotics functions include cardiac measurements and oxygen saturation monitoring (medical functions); examination record delivery, video and image play, and medical information delivery (operational functions); and the ability to recognize and avoid obstacles (movement functions). Disinfection and cleaning robots were the type of robots with the highest demand among healthcare workers.

Keywords: COVID-19; health worker; medical technology; need assessment; robotic.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This article mainly funded by the “Program Penelitian Kolaborasi Indonesia (PPKI)” research program run by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology and supported by Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia (grant number: 1959/UN6.3.1/PT.00/2021).