The rapid rise of digital health technologies, from artificial intelligence (AI) to robotics, is transforming healthcare. During the covid pandemic, robots played a crucial role in supporting frontline staff, assisting with tasks such as disinfection and logistics.
However, despite their potential to reduce the time healthcare professionals spend on non-direct patient care, robotic healthcare technologies remain underutilised. One of the key barriers to adoption is a lack of confidence, training, and technological literacy among healthcare staff, alongside concerns about how these innovations might impact their roles.
Recognising this challenge, Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh Napier University have joined forces on a pioneering project aimed at bridging the gap between robotics, nursing education, and healthcare practice.
By integrating expertise from computer science, robotics, nursing education, and workforce development, this collaborative initiative seeks to establish existing evidence on the use of socially assistive robots in nursing care and education.
Additionally, it will explore perceptions of the usability and acceptability of robotic technologies within healthcare settings while identifying the technological literacy needs of nurses. Ultimately, the project aims to provide recommendations on future learning and teaching priorities, ensuring that nursing professionals are equipped with the necessary skills to engage with emerging healthcare technologies effectively.
Hands-on learning with robotics in healthcare
Central to this pioneering initiative is an immersive, three-stage process that blends discovery with real-world interaction, ensuring nursing students and professionals alike can explore and shape the role of robotics in their field. It begins with a comprehensive scoping review, examining the current landscape of socially assistive robots in healthcare and unearthing both promising practices and persistent challenges.
This foundational knowledge sets the stage for a series of participatory workshops designed to move robotics from a theoretical concept to a tangible, hands-on experience where nursing students and professionals engage directly with robots such as MIRO-E (pictured), a pet-like companion offering emotional support, TEMI, a telepresence robot extending caregiver reach, ARI (pictured above), a humanoid designed for patient-facing roles, and TIAGO (pictured below), a mobile assistant capable of automating routine tasks. Each encounter will be captured through subjective measures assessing immediate reactions to usability, providing valuable insight into their potential impact in clinical settings. The first workshop is being held on May 8, and the researchers hope to start recruitment soon with an aim of 20 participants to ensure everyone has a chance to use the robots.
The second stage fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together computer scientists, roboticists, and nursing educators to explore how robotics could be meaningfully embedded into nursing education. Rather than simply adding standalone technology modules, discussions focus on integrating digital literacy and robotics training throughout the curriculum, ensuring nurses develop both technical and empathetic competencies.
In the final stage, the conversation extends to healthcare leaders and policymakers at Heriot-Watt University’s National Robotarium. Here, findings from the workshops will inform the development of a roadmap for the adoption of robotics in nursing practice, from pilot programmes in hospital wards to integration into pre-registration training. Through hands-on engagement, open dialogue, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, the project aims to ensure that nurses and healthcare teams are equipped to harness robotic technologies for the benefit of both patients and the profession.
By fostering multidisciplinary collaboration between robotics experts and nursing professionals, this project will support the co-production of innovative learning approaches that prepare nursing students for the evolving demands of digital healthcare. Integrating robotics into pre-registration nursing curricula will help develop a workforce that is technologically competent, confident, and future-proofed for the next generation of healthcare challenges.
Building a future-ready nursing workforce
While robots will never replace nurses, they can provide innovative solutions to support and sustain the nursing workforce during times of significant shortfall.
Robots can improve efficiency, enhance patient care, and reduce physical strain on nurses by handling repetitive and labour-intensive tasks. Embracing robotics as a valuable addition to education, in the workplace and caring environments is essential for a sustainable future.
This initiative reflects Heriot-Watt University’s ongoing commitment to advancing healthcare innovation, shaping the future of nursing education, and ensuring that technology serves as an enabler rather than a barrier in patient-centred care.
By Lydia Forrest, marketing officer for the Global Research Institute Health and Care Technologies.
