2023-06-17 17:50:00
What to do when a population keeps aging, but its country has too few health personnel to take care of it? This is the challenge that China must face today. Also, the Middle Empire wishes to turn to a most astonishing solution: it plans to use robots, and this, by the millions, nous apprends Interesting Engineering.
“As the number of elderly people continues to rise and care resources do not keep up, smart machines are needed to reduce the workload of healthcare personnel”said in the columns of the Chinese media Sixth Tone Gao Hongjun, director of a retirement home in central Shanghai. “Otherwise everyone will get tired and unable to take care of the elderly properly.”
Chinese authorities would now like one carer to be present for every four residents. However, only 320,000 caregivers are currently serving the 8.1 million residents of the country’s retirement homes. “This means that more than 1.7 million caregivers are missing in the country”, emphasizes Interesting Engineering. Robots might thus be one of the solutions to deal with this serious shortage.
Expensive measures
If at first glance, the plan of China seems well put together, the authorities will however have to face several obstacles before hoping to see an army of robots joining the retirement homes of the country. First, the cost of these machines is particularly high. Their large-scale implementation therefore seems complex.
Moreover, even though China has hundreds of companies specializing in the manufacture of “rehabilitation, support and care robots»the latter have not yet reached the stage of mass production, in particular because the authorities do not infuse enough money into these startups. Finally, Chinese nursing homes are simply too poor to afford robots themselves.
But all is not lost. “Experts have high hopes for the long-term prospects of China’s smart healthcare industry”, underlines the American media. This market is predicted to explode over the next decade. “and that in 2027 it will be more than three times what it was in 2021.”
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