Man told he’s dying by robot

Image Source: Henderson Biomedical

Yesterday Ernest Quintana, aged 78 was told by his doctor at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont that he was dying via a robot with a video-link screen.

The family of Mr. Quintana took to social media to express their anger and disappointment at the hospital’s lack of empathy towards their patients. A friend of Mr. Quintana’s daughter posted a photo of the robot on her Facebook account and wrote, “it told Mr. Quintana he has no lungs left only option is comfort care, remove the mask helping him breathe and put him on a morphine drip until he dies”. In an interview with BBC, she told them that it was “an extremely frustrating situation”, and “an atrocity of how care and technology are colliding”.

The hospital responded in a statement where they apologised for “falling short of the families expectations” but that the, “The use of the term ‘robot’ is inaccurate and inappropriate. This secure video technology is a live conversation with a physician using tele-video technology, and always with a nurse or other physician in the room.”

However, friends of the family once again responded on facebook saying, “That Robot Dr. May be ok for some situations but not to tell a Man he is going to Die.”