Outsourcing the Ethics of Care: Human-robot-healthcare interaction

Healthcare environments face persistent challenges balancing staffing shortages with the provision of high-quality patient care. A promising solution is the use of social robots which have potential to support the transformation of healthcare delivery. They are already being deployed across various care settings, including long-term residential facilities and paediatric wards, to assist with operational tasks, diagnostics, and direct patient interaction. Alongside these promising developments, however, come important challenges related to trust, implementation, and adaptation. For instance, healthcare practitioners need ongoing resources, training, and ethical guidance to effectively integrate, coordinate, and troubleshoot technological systems in everyday care. Moreover, by adding robots to the system of caregiving, not only functional aspects of care are outsourced to the technology, however also the social and ethical aspects of “good care” are affected. In this paper, we introduce three social robots currently used in healthcare. We will then explore the research question how can a combined lens of mediation theory and Joan Tronto’s ethics of care be used to frame and analyse the use and roles of such robots. We will examine how these frameworks can help us understand what constitutes “good robot care” and how this understanding can better position the role of social robots within the care system and how they can reshape the future care experience. Through this ethical reflection, we will discuss how the functions and design of these robots can be envisioned and tailored to specific care tasks and environments, ensuring that technological innovation genuinely supports, rather than undermines, the ethical and relational aspects of care in practice.