Patient Monitoring Roundtable No. 4 | 2026: Robotics in Care – What Happens to the Human Factor?
Save the Date: The fifth roundtable of the year will take place on June 22 at BALTIC at Charité, focusing on “AI-speech documentation.” Interested? Then book your ticket here to attend in person or online!
“Robotics in Care” – under this guiding theme, we gathered on May 21, 2026 at the Baltic for the fourth Patient Monitoring Roundtable (PMRT) of the year. The central question: what can care robots truly accomplish – and what does it take for them to do it well?
Embedded Ethics, Garmi, and much more
A robot changes bed linen faster, more hygienically, and more efficiently than a human. Sounds like progress. But what else is actually happening in that moment – and what might we lose in the process?
This was at the heart of the interesting keynote delivered by Svenja Breuer from the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Her topic: how robotics and AI are being used in medicine and care, and why we cannot leave this development solely to engineers.
GARMI: The Robot from Gerontronics Research
Breuer began by introducing GARMI, a care robot developed at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) at TU Munich. GARMI can perform physical examinations, interact with patients, and take over repetitive tasks – in physiotherapy, for example.
At first glance: impressive. At second glance: complex. Because even the case study shows that care work is far more than a sequence of discrete technical tasks. It is embedded in relationships, trust, and context-dependent decisions – things that cannot simply be translated into discrete, automatable steps.
What Nursing Professionals Really Know
Breuer also described an interview and focus group study she conducted with nursing professionals. Something surprising emerged: even seemingly trivial routine activities – such as putting a pillowcase on – have a communicative dimension that is invisible at first glance. A nurse described it this way: you can put on a pillowcase without being fully focused. And it is precisely in that moment that space opens up for a conversation. Patients open up because the situation is not direct or confrontational. Making the bed is actually an invitation to talk – and that invitation is taken up surprisingly often.
What is lost when this task is delegated to a robot? That is not a rhetorical question. It is one that must be answered seriously before technology is deployed.
Responsibility in the Age of Care Robotics
From the perspective of nursing professionals, Breuer identified pressing questions that have so far barely been addressed:
- How can flexibility and autonomy for clinical staff and patients be preserved?
- How does the relationship of trust change when a robot is in the room?
- Who bears responsibility for clinical decisions – human or machine?
- What happens in the event of an accident involving a robot? Who is liable?
These questions are not only ethical but also legally and organizationally highly relevant. And they cannot be answered after the fact – they must be integrated into the development process itself.
Embedded Ethics: Ethics as Part of the Design
Until now, Breuer argued, many technology developers treat ethics as a retrospective checkpoint: the system is built, and then someone comes along to check whether it is acceptable.
Her approach – Embedded Ethics and Social Science – reverses this. Social science and ethical expertise must be embedded in the development process from the very beginning. Not as a corrective, but as a shaping force.
Conclusion: Technology Needs Social Science Accompaniment
Breuer’s conclusion was clear: robotics and AI in healthcare are sociotechnical systems. They do not only change workflows – they change relationships, roles, and responsibilities. Anyone who wants to develop useful robots for healthcare must consider ethical and social implications early in the development process. And: the practical knowledge of those working in the field – the nursing professionals themselves – is essential.
This is not a brake on innovation. It is the prerequisite for innovation that actually delivers benefit.
Workshops: Implementing Robotics in the Clinic and a Real Robot
In two parallel workshops, clinicians, researchers, and developers worked together to identify where robotics could genuinely help in everyday hospital life: while one group mapped use cases and barriers – from logistics and medication preparation to data protection and liability questions – the other discussed with Svenja Breuer how technology should above all target areas where repetitive tasks crowd out time for real human connection.
In the third workshop, Navel Robotics presented their robot Navel live – participants were able to see it in person. The compact, humanoid-designed robot has been developed specifically for use in care homes: it is intended to help with apathy, agitation, and challenging behavior, to activate residents as a conversation partner, and to support staff during periods of understaffing. On the roadmap for 2026 are multilingual capability, autonomous navigation, and adapted dialogue strategies based on the degree of dementia. What the team emphasized above all: Navel is not meant to replace human care – but to make more of it possible.
Conclusion
The workshops demonstrated clearly: technology is perceived as most valuable where it reduces routine tasks and thereby creates more time for patient-centered care.
Next PMRT on June 22 at BALTIC
We look forward to welcoming you on June 22 to the fourth Patient Monitoring Roundtable of the year at the BALTIC at Charité. Don’t miss it!
The Patient Monitoring Roundtable is organized by INCH Health in partnership with the Institute of Medical Informatics at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Special thanks go to our sponsors Masimo, Dräger, and Philips, whose support makes the Patient Monitoring Roundtable possible.
We also thank Svenja Breuer and Navel Robotics for the inspiring keynote and excellent workshops, as well as all participants for their engaged collaboration in developing future scenarios for intelligent, safe, and patient-centered care.
