Being a nurse is a highly demanding but genuinely fulfilling job with the chance to touch many people’s lives. This is never highlighted more than during a healthcare crisis – personal or society-level – we are stricken by fear and uncertainty, nurses are there, actively in the front line, assisting patients and physicians. As the nursing profession requires the core of what makes us human – paying attention, being empathetic and caring -, it will never be replaced by technology. 

However, the whole of humanity sees a significant shortage of nurses according to the World Health Organization, and this 2023 report highlights how overburdened, underappreciated and burned-out an overwhelming majority of nurses feel.

Technological innovations in medicine can relieve nurses of the burden of many monotonous and repetitive tasks; especially in situations where time is of essence. These tools can further become commonplace in the daily work life of nurses in the near future.

In fact, the WHO’s State of the World’s Nursing Report highlights the importance of technology in nursing education and practice. Let’s see what the most promising ones are.

1. Robotics cutting back on monotonous tasks

Medication management, disinfection, carrying medical devices from A to B, lifting bedridden patients, navigating and greeting patients and relatives in the hospital are all tasks that robots could support.

The robust TUG robot and the streamlined Simeks’ Relay robot make the in-hospital transport of medical devices, drugs, laboratory specimens or sensitive supplies easier. They can carry around a multitude of racks, carts or bins working around the clock. Both could enable nurses to spend more time with their patients instead of running up and down the building floors. 

Another robot, Moxie from Diligent Robotics, is taking away repetitive tasks from nurses in hospitals in Texas. It picks up supplies from closets and delivers them to patients’ rooms; completely autonomously. 

Helping nurses keep up the highest level of hygiene is the Xenex LightStrike Robot. This UV disinfection robot disinfects a patient room as quickly as in 10 minutes and a surgical suite within 20 minutes. Its efficacy has even been proven in over 40 peer-reviewed studies.

Beyond robots supporting nurses in soulless tasks, there are several innovations that help them handle patients in more difficult situations. Certain robot companions can keep company to people feeling lonely or help treat mental health issues. Pepper, Paro, Dinsow, Buddy and deceased Jibo are all remarkable examples, even if not all survived. Paro is shaped like a baby seal, and it is especially cute and cuddly to help release stress and ease sadness and solitude. Pepper, the 1.2-meter tall humanoid “social robot”, was even “employed” as a receptionist in a Belgian and Czech hospital!

But these cute social robots are not the only ones helping out nurses, we’ve recently seen great robotic solutions for physiotherapy, and companies like LSR or Roboligent are working on these solutions that can revolutionize rehabilitation.

We can see that robots will help in many nursing tasks, but none of these solutions could actually substitute human nurses. This is due to a phenomenon called the Moravec paradox: the observation in artificial intelligence and robotics that, contrary to traditional assumptions, reasoning requires very little computation, but sensorimotor and perception skills require enormous computational resources. In simpler terms: robots that can easily beat the world’s best chess player could hardly compete with a human toddler in many simple movement tasks.

2. Remote communication reaching isolated communities

The COVID-19 pandemic boosted telemedicine into mainstream practice. It’s an effective tool to reduce unnecessary hospital visits, reduce risks of cross-infections, and still provide clinical care. Leveraging the same technology is telehealth nursing care, which is employed in both emergency and non-emergency situations.

In the former, nurses from around the world can participate in telephone triage set-ups. Moreover, nurses can monitor a patient’s oxygen levels, heart rate, respiration, blood glucose and more. In non-emergency situations, nurses can get their patients’ blood pressure readings or glucose readings, for instance. They can also instruct patients as to how to dress a wound or treat a minor burn.

Not only is telecommunication used for providing care, but it is also used to train nurses. “Some online or distance programs have been shown to increase access to rural and remote clinical facilities previously not associated with a “brick and mortar” education institution,” notes the WHO report.

The tendencies that started during the pandemic contributed to the birth of a whole new branch of the nursing profession: remote nursing, which, by now has a great number of sub-branches from telephone triage to case management. 21st-century solutions like virtual wards also bring new nursing roles, from remote monitoring to at-home assistance.

3. Drawing blood with technology

More often than not, the process of taking blood is a pain point for both patients and nurses. It’s known that patients usually dislike needles; but on the nurses’ side, they often have to endure long and miserable moments before finding the appropriate vein. This adds to the patient’s uncomfortable experience and here robots and vein scanners can help quicken the procedure.

We first wrote about Veebot, the “first robot phlebotomist” about 10 years ago, praising the idea multiple times. While it was still in development, the idea of using a combination of infrared light and image analysis to detect a suitable vein, and then applying ultrasound to see if the vessel has sufficient blood flow was fascinating. But we always noted that this is a technology still in development.

As of today, the first clinical trials of Vitestro’s blood drawing robot are already underway, with great initial results. The two-year study is scheduled to run through 2025 and involves 10,000 patients over five study phases in four leading Dutch hospital labs.

According to their interim results, 98% of patients indicated acceptance of the new, automated method of blood drawing and 83% rated the procedure pain as less than or comparable to manual blood draws. The company expects their solution to become commercially available before the end of next year.

Showing how the technology is indeed leaving the realm of sci-fi is a notable milestone: a Danish hospital has pre-ordered three of these devices, marking the company’s first international deployment.

But we don’t even have to look for these robots for tech assistance in drawing blood. Vein scanning devices have been around for over a decade. These involve light-based technology to illuminate peripheral veins to improve first stick success. Devices like AccuVein and VeinViewer adopt such an approach. A little while ago our team also tested the Aimvein Pro2.0, a great device with a still out-of-reach price tag.

4. Explaining complex medical language with 3D printing

Finger splints, organ models, personalised plaster casts, prosthetic parts, even biomaterials, food and, in the future, organs – there are amazing things we can already 3D print in healthcare. Several of these innovations could definitely improve the nurses’ jobs.

For example, nurses who are tasked with describing medical procedures to patients can use detailed, 3D-printed models. This helps improve communication around complex procedures with better visualisation. 

Another way the technology can be used is to feed patients on specific diets. The Foodini project from Natural Machines partners with healthcare institutions and authorities to print appealing foods for cancer patients or those on restricted diets. Another company, Biozoon, prints out gourmet-looking food for seniors who need to eat pureed meals.

Sometimes, nursing students themselves take the initiative to help patients via 3D printing. Graduating nursing students from Caldwell University have developed a unique pillbox for HIV/AIDS patients who need to swallow several pills a day but don’t want to be always asked about it. It’s the meeting point of nursing care, technology, and innovation – and we hope to see more of it in the future!

5. Portable diagnostics for increased access to care

The appearance of pocket-sized, user-friendly and portable diagnostic devices makes it easier and faster for nurses to care for a patient. Measuring health parameters and vital signs will be reduced to minutes, and massive, oversized machines for an ultrasound, ECG or laboratory testing will become things of the past. 

In fact, now one can literally pack a department’s worth of diagnostic tools in a briefcase. Most of these can upload readings online to be shared with a professional for further assessment. Such portable tools greatly improve access to care in remote regions and facilities lacking specialists. In such cases, nurses themselves can take readings and remotely share them with physicians for deeper analyses. 

For example, a nurse can follow up a patient’s vitals with the Viatom CheckMe Pro and listen to lung sounds with the Eko Core. The data can be sent to a physician to monitor the patient’s status remotely and recommend hospitalisation in case of suspicious readings. 

Portable ultrasound devices like the Philips Lumify and the Clarius can further assist nurses in certain critical tasks. Nurses trained in the use of such devices can accurately calculate fluid retention both in the pleural cavities of the lungs and the inferior vena cava of heart failure patients. This enables them to dispense diuretic drugs more precisely to prevent harmful fluid retention in those patients.

6. Artificial intelligence assessing risks and eliminating alarm fatigue

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to highly optimise processes in hospitals and even eliminate problematic alarm fatigue. By enhancing efficiency, AI will immensely benefit nurses.

Duke University researchers demonstrated such an application of AI in nursing. Their Sepsis Watch deep learning algorithm helps assess a patient’s risk for developing sepsis. It automatically alerts the hospital’s rapid response team in case of a high-risk patient and guides them through the first 3 hours of care administration. This is critical in preventing complications.

Alarm fatigue refers to the point when caregivers become desensitised to alarm signs from the myriad of devices emitting a cacophony of beeps all day in the clinical setting. Healthcare institutions experience as many as 187 alarms per bed per day, of which 72% to 99% are false alarms. Those false alerts add up to alarm fatigue, which in turn can lead nurses and physicians to miss those alarms that really need clinical attention.

AI solutions like ambient intelligence can slash the rate of false alarms and thereby eliminate alarm fatigue. In a 2019 study, researchers showed that their AI-based system helped reduce notifications received by caregivers by up to 99.3%! With such a system in place, nurses can be notified of cases that do require attention and focus on those.

7. Virtual reality for education

Medical education, surgery, rehabilitation medicine, psychiatry, and psychology could all benefit from virtual reality (VR), and the field of nursing care could reap the fruits of the technology, too.

Virtual simulations could support the training phase of nurses. A survey from Wolters Kluwer even found that 65% of nursing education programs adopt virtual simulations, including VR. This ensures that nurses are practice-ready and enhances the training process. For instance, Robert Morris University developed a VR game allowing nursing students to practice urinary catheter insertion. Those VR-trained students showed the same pass rate as students who practiced on mannequins. 

At another institution, the University of Nevada, Reno, nursing students use VR headsets to visualize doctors and nurses in scenarios with medical complications; scenes they might not always be exposed to during their education.

Others like the University of New England and the University of Michigan are using VR to put students in simulations where they have to train their communication and empathy skills.

8. New tech for better medication management

Managing one’s medications can receive a boost from new tech such as chatbots, companion robots and digital pills. 

Chatbots are already integral parts of the healthcare system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, several dedicated chatbots were launched for remote risk assessment and are still being used; but these chatbots can further ease the burden on nurses by supplementing some of their tasks. For example, Florence is an electronic “personal nurse” in the colour blue. “She” can remind patients to take their pills, which might be a handy feature for older patients.

Sometimes, compliance starts with the drug itself. For this purpose, digital pills exist, which one can track to monitor adherence. Researchers even showed improved treatment adherence among tuberculosis patients who used such smart pills. etectRx and SIGUEMED develop digital pills to help patients take their medicine properly.

Both nursing jobs and robots will stay

Although there are many fearing that AI, robots, and automation will take their jobs in healthcare, statistics show that nursing is a field with constant employment growth, and the demand for nurses will continue to increase in the future, especially as global populations continue to age in conjunction with a rapidly expanding healthcare industry.

As nursing care requires refined social skills, a high level of empathy, and emotional intelligence, robots or smart algorithms aren’t likely to fill up the field any time soon. However, as the demand for nurses rises, there will be parts of the job augmented by technologies from robots and chatbots through 3D printing to VR. Nurses could benefit a lot from technology as it might make their tasks less cumbersome, more creative and it might free up some of their time.

However, if nurses don’t start understanding and embracing new technologies as part of their work, the profession and the best interests of patients will suffer. The WHO report echoes a similar need for nurses to be equipped and conversant with digital health technologies. Needless to say that at The Medical Futurist, we believe this is a crucial need for the betterment of the healthcare landscape. 

To learn more about the technological future of medical specialties, we invite you to grab a copy of our dedicated e-book on the topic: