“In Germany, around four million people will be dependent on care and nursing in 2030. Already today there is talk of a nursing crisis, which is likely to intensify further in view of demographic developments in the coming years. Fewer and fewer young people will be available to the labour market as potential carers for the elderly. Experts estimate that there will be a shortage of around half a million nursing staff in Germany by 2030. Given these dramatic forecasts, are nursing robots possibly the solution to the problem? Scientists from the disciplines of computer science, robotics, medicine, nursing science, social psychology, and philosophy explored this question at a Berlin conference of the Daimler and Benz Foundation. The machine ethicist and conference leader Professor Oliver Bendel first of all stated that many people had completely wrong ideas about care robots: ‘In the media there are often pictures or illustrations that do not correspond to reality’.” (Die Welt, 14 June 2019) With these words an article in the German newspaper Die Welt begins. Norbert Lossau describes the Berlin Colloquium, which took place on 22 May 2019, in detail. The article is available in English and German. So are robots a solution to the nursing crisis? Oliver Bendel denies this. They can be useful for the caregiver and the patient. But they don’t solve the big problems.
BY OLIVER BENDEL
