Medical Robots and the Right to Health Care

Abstract

Robotic technologies have shown to have clear potential for providing innovation in treatments and treatment modalities for various diseases and disorders that cover unmet needs and are cost-efficient. However, the emergence of technology that promises to improve health outcomes raises the question regarding the extent to which it should be incorporated, how, made available to whom, and on what basis. Since countries usually have limited resources to favour access to state-of-the-art technologies and develop strategies to realize the right to health progressively, in this article, we investigate whether the right to health, particularly the core obligations specified under this right, helps implement medical robots.