Designing Care-fully: Robots for Acute Cancer Care

Patients with cancer (PwC) have a hard time getting prompt treatment in acute care settings, and feel unseen, unheard, and neglected. This is due to systemic problems: worldwide, Emergency Department (ED) healthcare workers (HCWs) are overworked and EDs are understaffed. Robots will not fix these problems; however, prior work suggests if well-designed and contextualized, they may support cancer care. Based on longstanding collaborations with PwC and ED HCWs, in this paper we report on an exploration of the design space of social robots for acute cancer care. Using a care ethics lens, we found robots can be uniquely positioned to amplify compassion within deeply human care relationships through their social presence, while performing routine tasks, such as patient monitoring. However, participants suggested the human experiences of pain and distress may remain elusive for robots to engage with meaningfully. Our work reveals HCWs and PwC saw robots as means to expand relational care in the ED, and explores how future HRI research may meaningfully support these care relationships.