Designing Care-fully: Robots for Acute Cancer Care

Overview

This paper examines the design space for social robots in acute cancer care settings, addressing systemic challenges in Emergency Departments where patients with cancer experience delays in treatment and feelings of neglect. Grounded in a care ethics framework and informed by sustained engagement with patients with cancer and emergency department healthcare workers, the investigation explores how robots might augment rather than replace human care relationships through social presence and task automation.

Methods and approach

The research employed collaborative design methodologies with two primary stakeholder groups: patients with cancer and emergency department healthcare workers. A care ethics lens was applied as the theoretical framework for analyzing the design space. The approach was grounded in longstanding institutional partnerships enabling in-depth qualitative engagement with stakeholder perspectives on robotic integration into acute cancer care contexts.

Key Findings

Participants identified potential value in social robots functioning as amplifiers of compassion within existing care relationships while executing routine monitoring tasks. Healthcare workers and patients with cancer conceived of robots as mechanisms for expanding relational care capacity within resource-constrained emergency departments. However, significant limitations emerged regarding robot engagement with subjective human experiences of pain and distress, which participants identified as domains where meaningful robot interaction remained elusive.

Implications

The findings indicate that social robots in acute care contexts require careful contextualization to support rather than instrumentalize human care relationships. The care ethics framework revealed that robots may have distinctive affordances for enhancing emotional presence and distributing workload, yet their efficacy is contingent on integration within fundamentally human-centered care systems. The research suggests that human-robot interaction scholarship should prioritize understanding relational care practices rather than positioning robots as independent care agents.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.