[The euthanasia law and professional experiences: tensions in clinical practice].

Objective: To analyze the process of assisted death provision in Catalonia and identify the main tensions, difficulties, and/or sources of discomfort related to professional practice.

Method: A qualitative study was conducted based on interviews (n=29) and focus groups (n=19) with professionals who participated in the euthanasia process. The selection of participants combined the snowball and maximization of variability procedures, taking into account the variables of professional profile, setting, gender, age and territoriality.

Robots in Healthcare? What Patients Say.

In this paper, we analyse patients' perspectives on the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic systems in healthcare. Based on citizens' experiences when hospitalised for COVID-19, we explore how the opinions and concerns regarding healthcare automation could not be disassociated from a context of high pressure on the health system and lack of resources, and a political discourse on AI and robotics; a situation intensified by the pandemic. Thus, through the analysis of a set of interviews, a series of issues are identified that revolve around the following: the empirical effects of imagined robots, the vivid experience of citizens with the care crisis, the discomfort of the ineffective, the virtualised care assemblages, the human-based face-to-face relationships, and the automatisation of healthcare tasks.

[Robots for care. The ethics of measured action in the face of uncertainty].

Beyond the utopian or dystopian scenarios that accompany the progressive introduction of robots for care in daily environments, their use in the medical field entails controversies that require alternative forms of ethical responsibility. From this general objective, in this article we propose a series of reflections to articulate an ethical framework capable of orienting the introduction and use of robots in the field of health. The presented proposal is developed from a series of considerations about robots and care, as a starting point to develop an ethical framework based on the principle of precaution and measured action.

Children's Imaginaries of Human-Robot Interaction in Healthcare.

This paper analyzes children’s imaginaries of Human-Robots Interaction (HRI) in the context of social robots in healthcare, and it explores ethical and social issues when designing a social robot for a children’s hospital. Based on approaches that emphasize the reciprocal relationship between society and technology, the analytical force of imaginaries lies in their capacity to be embedded in practices and interactions as well as to affect the construction and applications of surrounding technologies. The study is based on a participatory process carried out with six-year-old children for the design of a robot.