Healthcare robot to be a potential market around the world

With the increasing global aging and rising medical demand, the development of assistant robots is taking the fast lane. In fact, the market expectations of entire service robot industry in recent years are constantly good. The global market size is expected to reach 82 billion US dollars by 2021.

Doug Moore, the senior manager of human assistant technical department of Toyota, which released Human Support Robot, pointed out that, Toyota is trying to diversify the lives of people with disabilities by increasing their mobility, including the development of technical solutions to assist the limited action. The research and development of HSR and the tests of Romy are the company's business development areas to help people with disabilities control their own lives. Except for Toyata, Teijin Japan and Panasonic also start the research and development of robotics in healthcare.

Similar to the situation in Japan, China is also facing increasing social problems such as increased aging and the increasing proportion of people with disabilities. As can be expected, with time going, in the future we need to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to care for the elderly and the disabled, and this will become an important burden of our country. If we can provide a number of care robots for the elderly dedicated to nursing work, this will not only improve the quality of their lives, but also ease the current national and social pressures.

As a result, the huge market outlook is driving the rapid growth of sales of home robots such as assistant robots. Recently, the industry research institutions analysis International released the report shows that in 2016 China's service robot market reached 7.29 billion yuan, a substantial increase of 44.6% year on year. In addition, analysis International predicts that the next three years, China's service robot market will continue to grow, the size of 2019 is expected to close to 15.2 billion. In the whole world, the compound annual growth rate of intelligent service robots for the next five years (2017-2021) is about 16.19 percent, and the global service robot market will reach $ 82 billion by 2021.

The booming market is expected to show that the development of robots, especially home-assisted personal use, is very promising. Therefore, with the global aging further intensified, escort, education, medical and other needs of the rising, the service robot will continue to maintain rapid development, to promote social changes in various fields.

The current and future situation of intelligent service robot

The data mining and analysis iiMedia Research released "2016 China Robot Industry Research Report" shows that the sales of service robots will reach 34.9 million units by 2018. And, Chinese government released the robot industry development plan (2016 - 2020), manifesting the robot industry will be officially promoted to national strategy.

At present, economic and technological development and social civilization are the background of the birth of the artificial intelligent robots. When the industrialization level has been improving rapidly, the scientific and technological development has been accelerating and the value of the labor force has been continuously improving. Thus, human being’s repetitive workload need to be overtaken urgently.

In recent years, the application of robots has gradually shifted from the industrial field to the fields of cleaning, education, patients and elderly health care and home service. The innovative AI robotics has developed rapidly. The development of service robot is expected to provide new economic growth and driving force for the development of the national economy.

China's population over 60 years has exceeded 10% of the total population, the aging population will become China's unprecedented challenges. In addition, the proportion of the disabled in China is among the highest in the world. In the near future, care for the elderly and the disabled will be an important burden for society, requiring a lot of robotics in healthcare to provide services to help care for the daily life of the elderly and the disabled. All these are to improve their quality of life, thereby reducing the overall number of social workers and the quality of the demand.

Education requirement for intelligent educational robots will form a huge market. At president and during the promotion of quality education, general education, research university model, the promotion of educational robot courses, hands-on assembly and programming practice can expand the young people's logical thinking ability, this entertaining plus education new model has become an effective means and tools for hi-tech education.

At the same time, China's overall objective situation is demanding pre-school education more and more. With the vigorous development of the domestic pre-school market, pre-school education and entertainment robot for 3-6 year-old children will also have a huge market space.

In the future, intelligent service robots are expected to offer a large quantity of services in the fields of education, catering, shopping guide and so on with the continuous improvement of voice interaction and semantic understanding technology, etc. When the hi-tech giants are deploying and the new players continue to emerge the intelligent service robot industry, only the enterprises with ongoing technology upgrades and product updates service robot in order to stand out in the industry history.

Sanbot helps out with the transformation of Community Health Service Center

Healthcare reform means the responsibilities of basic level clinics are very important. Revamping the classification system, database, and health policies provides both opportunities and challenges.

In the new scenario, the Shenzhen Progressive Group Inc. (PGI) and Sanbot robot together have created the first smart community health center, which is located in Shenzhen Luohu District. This has received praise from both the provincial and national health planning leaders.

Intelligent healthcare is the new format based on IoT at the “Internet plus” era.

This intelligent medical service model is based on patients’ data. This model is divided in three stages, which are as follows: Data acquisition, knowledge discovery, and remote service. Basically, data acquisition is completed by a network of medical databases; discovery relies on big data processing technology, and the remote services are provided by Cloud service with medical terminals. These three factors give healthcare a sense of “wisdom, awareness, and action.”

With triangular layout of “device, App, and Cloud service,” the intelligent humanoid robot compliments the new intelligent medical service model beautifully and is a key aspect to this service, especially when it comes to Cloud computing platform services. The service model of Cloud computing and IoT is leading to data storage and the processing of medical data becoming efficient, scalable, and affordable, offering terrific medical services for people.

“Robot + Intelligent Healthcare” is equal to a successful transformation of local outpatient services.

PGI and the QIHAN team, together with Sanbot intelligent healthcare robot, went to the Shenzhen Luohu District community center to demonstrate the latest medical solutions and help advance the local clinics. This presentation at the community center was the first pilot program for this intelligent healthcare platform, and it was incredibly successful. The advanced medical robotics was exceptional and received praise from all leadership levels from the State Planning Commission and Hubei Provincial Health Administrative Department. This only further showcases how robotics and AI can revolutionize the healthcare industry. Sun Xizhou, the president of Luohu Hospital, said that the hospital will continue to support the usage of AI technology in community health clinics.

Sanbot is bringing intelligent medical solutions and creating a more advanced healthcare industry.

China is encouraging social programs to participate in the healthcare transformation. In 2016, the “Healthcare China 2030” laid out its plan of action. The focal point will be on the population’s health and emphasis on the local clinics and integrating the advanced health care solutions into all policies. QIHAN Sanbot robotics is a perfect fit for this roadmap and was beloved by hospital residents, doctors, and the health planning commission. The scientific and technological value is revamping the healthcare system and creating a successful transformation and a new model.

The advanced robotics in healthcare carries smart medical solutions, which is designed to build a connection of medical resources and data, creating an interactive informational environment. Based on the open API platform of Sanbot, Cloud computing, big data, IoT, and mobile medical apps will bring huge advantages to the IT infrastructure of the healthcare industry and will innovate the healthcare industry.

In the modern age of “Internet + Healthcare”, the need for fast updates and strategic adjustments is paramount. AI is the key in the next step for the healthcare industry, and many lives will be saved. 

IDC Survey about Implementing Robots in Healthcare

What are main drivers for robot deployment among healthcare providers today?

According to IDC Survey 2017, the main drivers for robot deployment among healthcare providers surveyed were identified at hospitals with 200+ beds. These organizations were driven to deploy advanced medical robotics in 2017 as the top organizational priority area for technology investments, ahead of cloud and mobility. The main drivers included improving productivity and efficiency, improving repeatability and consistency of processes, increasing operations capacity, increasing operational agility and flexibility, reducing labor costs, and increasing speed of operations.

What are the typical use cases for robots among healthcare providers today?

Most use cases for robots today according to IDC (2017) were identified at hospitals with 200+ beds where advanced AI robots could accurately handle time-consuming tasks, reduce labor, and prevent errors. These were primarily in stocking functions (e.g. packing medications, delivery of goods, and packing sterile supplies) and increasingly seen in surgery, home care assistance, and disinfection.

What are the primary reasons for implementing robots in healthcare … safety, economics?

The primary reasons for implementing robots in healthcare appeared to be a result of an increasing perception, appreciation, and realization of robots as able to deliver value in healthcare operations. This was mostly through automating manual and laborious tasks, but also increasingly through the adoption of robotics in healthcare for clinical applications and emergent use cases.

What do you expect in future use cases to look like?

According to IDC (2017) emergent and future use cases for robots in hospitals with 200+ beds were identified as mostly as developments and adoption for automated packing functions, but also as an emergent increase for application in surgery and disinfection, patient lifting, greeting patients, and remote monitoring.

What influences a robot investment decision?

According to IDC (2017) the decision to invest in an artificial intelligence robotics was greatly influenced by vendor attributes. The top attributes were identified as cost, quality and reliability, as well as vendor global reach, local presence, and knowledge. An appealing feature of the robot investment decision was the majority of hospitals surveyed reported an annual maintenance cost per robot amounting to less than 30,000 (USD) and a medium-term outlook for realizing ROI on the investment decision.

Why is robotics gaining traction among hospitals?

According to IDC (2017) robots are gaining traction in hospitals as a result of the main business priorities for hospitals with 200+ beds being to improve the operational value chain along the lines of quality, experience, flexibility, capacity, scale, and costs.

Seven Development Trends for Robots in the Future (Part 1)

Today, the development ofartificial intelligent roboticscan be characterized as: Horizontally, the application uses are expanding,from 95% of industrial applications to more fields of non-industrial applications. Vertically, there are more and more different types of robots, some are looking like more human like, while others are becoming very small, some say as small as a grain of rice. Robots are becoming smarter and more enhanced. 

Development Prospects of the Robotics Industry

One of the most positive parts of “Made in China 2025” is the robotics industry. The robotics industryis expected to reach $4.5 trillion by 2025. From this assessment, $260 millionwill come from advanced medical robotics in hospitals; 1.4 trillion will come from industrial automation and business service tasks. The use of robotics in the business industry is equal to $75 million in full-time employees. Also, smart home robots efficiency will save $500 billion.

Future Development Trends of Robotics

The development of robots is the next industrial/technological revolution, leading humanity in a new and advanced direction. In theory, a robot with “consciousness” is a highly advanced AI robot, but consciousness can be divided into simple consciousness and complex consciousness. Of course, the human consciousness is still way, way more advanced compared to a robot’s. And, today’s robot’s “consciousness” is still in simple consciousness. The future consciousness of intelligent robots is in the following developments:

1: More perfection of the language function

Because robots will be interacting with humans, the language function must be perfect. To achieve perfection, the robot’s internal memory must store a lot of speech patterns and an extensive vocabulary. A robot’s language ability relies on how much language data is stored. 

As time moves on, the language function of artificial intelligent robots will become better and better. This is undeniable. Soon, robots will be able to learn multiple languages faster than a human. In addition, robots can utilize the self-reorganization vocabulary ability. This means that they are communicating with humans, they can automatically use relevant of similar phrases if they are confronted with statements or words that or not internally stored. This ability of being able to respond to a previous sentence in a logical way is a form of consciousness.

2: Perfecting the movements

A robot’s movement is similar to a human’s. Human gestures are very diverse, waving, shaking hands, walking, running, jumping, and more gestures are all human movements and actions.Robots can imitate some of these movements, but they are slow and rigid.

Intelligent service robots in the future will have more realistic movements, having them seem more human like. Robots may soon be able to have movements that many humans cannot do such as a somersault or handstand.

3: Looking more humanlike

As scientists develop more advanced intelligent humanoid robots, they will use the human bodyas a reference point. Japan has been leading the world in “realistic” robots, but China has some “realistic” robots as well.

The future of robots is to reach a point where robots will look just like a human. Even from a fardistance, the robot will look like a human.

China seeks to lead the automatic manufacturing and intelligent service

China's manufacturing industry revolution is at the full speed as more and more industries introduce robots to upgrade the manufacturing speed and quality and customer experience.

"Industrial robots will witness a 'golden period of development' in the next 20 to 30 years in China with the transformation and upgrading of Chinese manufacturing," Luo Jun, CEO of the International Robotics and Intelligent Equipment Industry Alliance, an industry think tank, told the Global Times, a hot daily Chinese newspaper.

Meanwhile, intelligent service robots that can be used as domestic assistants and in hospitals, hotels and nursing homes are becoming increasingly known to the public. Government initiatives to improve the quality of China's industries, such as "Made in China 2025," have sought to support the country's robot industry.

Sun Ying, deputy president of the Zhejiang Robot Association and head of a robotics firm in Hangzhou, told the Global Times that her company's sales revenue reached 200 million yuan ($29 million) last year, up from just 600,000 yuan in 2012 when the company was established. Sun's company mainly provides industrial robots for the detection of flaws and measurements to the logistics, automobile and optical communication sectors. 

"Most of our robots were sold to factories in southern China in the past, but starting this year, our market has expanded to European countries including Russia, the Czech Republic and Finland following China's Belt and Road initiative," Sun said. Meanwhile, the company is also eyeing the service robot industry, establishing a new branch last year to develop advanced medical robotics for nursing homes, according to Sun.

The National Manufacturing Strategy Advisory Committee, a national advisory organ, said it predicts that more than 150,000 industrial robots will be sold in China by 2020, with more than 800,000 in service by then. The committee added that the sector will be worth tens of billions of yuan and will be globally competitive, thepaper.cn reported.

China has struggled to keep pace with Western countries in developing and researching programmable autonomous robots, and the techniques behind core components of industrial robots, such as electrical machinery and controllers, are monopolized by Japan and Germany, according to Luo. 

To encourage Chinese scientists to develop robotic technology, China has allocated 600 million yuan for 42 robotics programs this year, the Ministry of Science and Technology said in August. Luo suggested the government step up efforts to develop next generation advanced AI robots which use artificial intelligence in order to narrow the gap with Western developed countries.