The Views of Hospital Laboratory Workers on Augmenting Laboratory Testing with Robots

One way to address shortages in the workforce and improve the safety of health workers is through robots. Here, we will specifically look at whether and how robots might augment workers working on the pre-analytical phase of clinical testing in hospital laboratories. We conducted eight interviews with workers using futuristic autobiographies. Through our analysis, we identified three themes. Workers envisioned robots to increase their well-being and change blue-collar workers' tasks towards that of automation operators. The latter was perceived to be a change towards doing more meaningful tasks (cognitive tasks, rather than manual labour). Additionally, workers have a need to better cope with structural changes and temporary fluctuations in the workflow. More general-purpose robots could address this.