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ABSTRACT
This paper analyses the application status and government policies relating to care robots in Taiwan. The paper argues that Taiwan has more numbers of monitoring/monitoring entertainment robots than assistive ones and, second, regarding government policy, thus far there is no definite care robot policy in the country. Concerning the three characteristics of care robots, three government departments are involved. However, regarding the formulation of policy, these three departments function independently. Consequently, this paper proposes a collaborative mechanism for intergovernmental integration and discuss the possible societal, economic, legal, and ethical dimensions of the application of care robots.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
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3. We can trace the important related LTC policies in Taiwan back to their earliest development in the 1980s, when the Senior Citizens Welfare Act was passed, and the Long-Term Care 10-Year Plan in 2007 with its extended version of the Long-Term Care 10-Year Plan 2.0 in 2016 (Ministry of Health and Welfare, Citation2016a). There have been many research-confirmed assistive devices that can enable the elderly to live independently and even ease the care burden (Cheek, Nikpour, & Nowlin, Citation2005). Unfortunately, the Long-Term Care 2.0 policy did not go into much detail on assistive devices.
4. ISO 13482:2014 indicates that care robots are ‘mobile servant robots’, ‘physical assistant robots’, and ‘person carrier robots’. Although these are not the same exact types discussed in this article, the standards are still an important basis for care robot development.
5. The 11th Article of the ‘Taiwan Physicians Act’ stipulates that ‘aside from being in the mountains, on an offshore island, in a remote area or under exceptional, emergent circumstances, physicians may not treat, issue prescriptions or certificates of diagnosis to patients not diagnosed by the physician himself/herself’.
6. According to news reports, the MOHW was going to announce that it would revise the Physician Act in November 2017 to extend telemedicine to chronic patients, patients in need of follow-up, patients in LTC institutions, patients in National Health Insurance Home Health Care Integration Programs, and patients in Family Physician Integrated Care Programs, but at present the MOHW has not officially announced the revised content. Even so, there is still a restriction on who can receive telemedicine. Whether or not it will be necessary in the future to make sure that more senior citizens receive telemedicine through monitoring robots and how to do so are topics that need to be discussed.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yu-hsiang Chou
Yu-hsiang Chou is Research Specialist of Center for Innovative Research on Aging Society, as well as doctoral student, Department of Social Welfare, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. He used to work at Research Centre on ICF and Assistive Technology, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan. His research interests centre on the influence of assistive technology on elderly and people with disabilities and the development of long term care and technology assistive policy in Taiwanese context.
Shu-yung Brenda Wang
Shu-Yung Brenda Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Welfare at National Chung Cheng University in Chiayi, Taiwan. She received her PhD in Social Welfare from the Columbia University in New York, USA. Her primary research interests are gender and welfare state, and comparative family policy. She was the Secretary-General of Social Welfare Association of Taiwan (2014–2016). Her research focuses on investigating gender inequality, fertility, and child care policies in Taiwan. She has published her works in journals ‘Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies’ and ‘National Social Work Reviews’.
Yi-ting Lin
Yi-ting Lin is an assistant professor at Department of Social Work, Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from National Chung Cheng University in 2015. Her research interest is gender, poverty, income inequality and the related social policy. She has focused on the effect of the women’s labour force participation on poverty and family income inequality by using large-scale household databases in Taiwan.