Computers are making headway in the health care field, its true. However, there are many things computers and robots are not capable of doing. A robot cannot analyze the emotion in words. They cannot understand the complex nature of open heart surgery and all the variables that come with it. They cannot grasp the effect of birth and death on family. Hence the reason that they will never completely take over the medical field.
Many people have taken to self diagnosing medical problems because today when you visit the doctor you get 10 minutes of their time and its increadibly impersonal. Once upon a time your family physician knew you by name, knew your medical history, daily medications, and allergies without having to consult a chart. Today a nurse does all of the preliminary work, taking your vitals, up dating your medical history, allergies, and medications. When the doctor comes in he has 10 minutes or less to diagnose your problem and get you out of the room before its cleaned and used for the next patient.
Instead of wasting a doctors time its easier for people to go on line and check their symptoms against a list from a knowledgable web site like WebMD.com because its faster, doesnt require waiting in a room with 20 other sick people for 6 hrs, and once you know whats wrong you can determine if you need to see a doctor from there. Yes its equally as impersonal but at the same time it can be healthier. Why go to the doctors office and risk getting sick or sicker when you can stay home and determine you have the flu while sitting in front of your computer?
Yes robots and computers in the health care industry are a scary realization but there will always be humans to run those computers and robots, humans to do the complex things like open heart surgery, humans to come out and give the news whether good or bad. Why? Because humans are both emotional and analytical, and while a robot may analyze it will always be in mathmatical terms, a look at the odds. A human will look at a patient and say ” I have to try to save this person.” A robot will look at a patient and determine the odds of being able to save them. The health care industry knows that by replacing humans with robots its morbidity/mortality rate will increase. Even HMOs arent willing to take that chance.
The upside to computers in the medical field is that as information is logged into a database its readily accessable for all doctors the world over. If a patient comes in with a rare illness the doctor can search the symptoms and find potential answers and causes quickly which would hopefully reduce morbidity/mortality.
The science of the medical industry is vast, we have only begun to decypher all of it. We know much but there is still much to learn. Humans make errors which in health care can have damning consequenses. Misdiagnosies happen frequently, more frequently than any of us wants to consider. Robots are human made. That being said you have to be concerned about what sort of errors a robot might make. Again, I really dont see anyone in any hospital signing off on the use of robots for anything more than house cleaning staff. Its just not practical from any stand point in the health care industry. There posibility for error is too great.
While I think that in time yes, robots will be there to do some things like bandage wounds and provide medication dispension I have a hard time believing that they will do more complex things like set bones, perform surgery, and birth babies. Somethings just cant be programmed and those are just a few of them. No matter how “routine” something might be there is always the posibility that something will go wrong and no amount of programming will prepare a robot for the rapid analysis and correction of an issue that a human can do.
I think you can rest easy in knowing that it will be a long time before robots make major head way into the medical field.

such thing as a private life is long history. So for simple questions, psychological and or medical why not use a computer. The more complicated ones should be answered in a vis-á-vis contact with a psych., or doctor.