Medical interviewing with a robot instead of a doctor : who do we trust more with sensitive information?

Abstract

Patients often do not trust their physicians with confidential, private information. They are worried about judgment, and ultimately this leads to poorer health outcomes. Physicians also do not listen to specific groups of people, biasing healthcare decisions. It may, therefore, be helpful to complement or delegate some of a physician's tasks to a robot. People are more willing to disclose private information to robots, which they find unbiased without negative judgment [2]. Robots can ask all relevant questions regardless of sex, gender, or sexual orientation [11]. This proposal explores the use of robotics within medicine, evaluating patient trust and information disclosure, to supplement and promote unbiased healthcare provider decisions. The experiment will employ a physician to conduct 90 patient interviews between three groups (G) using the standardized Brown Interview Checklist, either with (G1) or without (G2) a proxy robot. Patients interviewed by the robot will be split between those aware (G2a) or unaware (G2b) that a physician will be controlling the robot. We hypothesize that using a physical robot will improve information disclosure with less stress, and perhaps even off-load physician workload for more targeted and appropriate healthcare decisions.