In a sprawling exhibit at the conference in a Washington hotel Monday, the group displayed 50 prototypes and early-stage products — from a robotic assistant called “Nursebot” to an interactive, Web-enabled medicine cabinet.
Some of the technology is expensive. It costs about $4,500 to outfit a home with wireless sensors in one Intel project: A personal computer and the Internet are used to allow doctors and relatives to check on a range of activities by a senior living alone. It tracks such things as whether medications have been taken to how many steps the person has walked since waking up, said Eric Dishman, chair of the Center for Aging Services Technology.
Prices should come down significantly in the future, he said, and those costs would be weighed against the sky-high price of medical care
Now, I’ve heard of a nursing shortage, but a nursebot? Our society definitely accepts robots on an assembly line, but to care for our loved ones? I’m not so sure about this.