Category Archives: healthcare

Robots Won’t Save Japan addresses the Japanese government’s efforts to develop care robots in response to the challenges of an aging population, rising demand for eldercare, and a critical shortage of care workers. Drawing on ethnographic research at key sites of Japanese robot development and implementation, James Wright reveals how such devices are likely to transform the practices, organization, meanings, and ethics of caregiving if implemented at scale.

This new form of techno-welfare state that Japan is prototyping involves a reconfiguration of care that deskills and devalues care work and reduces opportunities for human social interaction and relationship building. Moreover, contrary to expectations that care robots will save labor and reduce health care expenditures, robots cost more money and require additional human labor to tend to the machines. As Wright shows, robots alone will not rescue Japan from its care crisis. The attempts to implement robot care instead point to the importance of looking beyond such techno-fixes to consider how to support rather than undermine the human times, spaces, and relationships necessary for sustainably cultivating good care.

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501768040/robots-wont-save-japan/#bookTabs=1

Inside Japan’s long experiment in automating elder care

The reality, of course, is more complex, and the popularity of robots among Japanese people relies in large part on decades of relentless promotion by state, media, and industry. Accepting the idea of robots is one thing; being willing to interact with them in real life is quite another. What’s more, their real-life abilities trail far behind the expectations shaped by their hyped-up image. It’s something of an inconvenient truth for the robot enthusiasts that despite the publicity, government support, and subsidies—and the real technological achievements of engineers and programmers—robots don’t really feature in any major aspect of most people’s daily lives in Japan, including elder care. 

https://www-technologyreview-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-automating-eldercare-robots/amp/

Meet the chatbot that simulates a teen experiencing a mental health crisis

In digital conversation, Riley is a young person who is trying to come out as genderqueer. When you message Riley, they’ll offer brief replies to open-ended questions, sprinkle ellipses throughout when saying something difficult, and type in lowercase, though they’ll capitalize a word or two for emphasis.

Riley’s humanness is impressive given that they’re a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence to accomplish a unique goal: simulate what it’s like to talk to a young person in crisis so that volunteer counselors can become skilled at interacting with them and practice asking about thoughts of suicide. Read more (Mashable)

Why Tired Chinese Youth are Going Punk to Tackle Their Sleep Problems

A recent survey shows that in 2020, although people spent more time at home thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, it took them an extra two or three hours to fall asleep, while the number of online searches for sleep problems increased 43%. In just six years, the national average sleep time dropped by two hours, from 8.8 hours in 2013 to 6.9 in 2019. And perhaps not surprisingly, those in their twenties and thirties sleep the latest — and least — among all age groups. Read more (RADII)

Amazon to Offer Telehealth Service to Other U.S. Firms This Summer

Amazon said it has started to offer its Amazon Care program to employees and other companies throughout Washington state and plans to make the program available throughout the U.S. this summer. Launched in 2019 at its Seattle headquarters, Amazon Care started by offering virtual primary-care services to Amazon employees in the city. The service also has an at-home care option, where medical professionals are dispatched to perform medical services such as blood draws or listening to a patient’s lungs. Read more (WSJ)

Covid-19, Nordic trust and collective denial: Sweden and Norway compared

In March 2020, as the pandemic strengthened its grip around Europe and the world, I wondered how I would manage my weekly work commute from Stockholm to Oslo when my native country, Sweden, went against the grain and took the controversial decision to keep the country open, while Norway embarked on a full lockdown, in line with the approach taken by other Nordic countries.

Norway and Sweden are not just neighbours geographically, they share strong historical, cultural and economic ties, once even forming part of the same country before Norway gained independence from Sweden in 1905. Read more (CoronaTimes.com)

Hofstede Cultural Dimensions