Can robots help promote testing capacity for SARS-CoV-2?

UNSTRUCTURED: There is currently increasing interest internationally in deploying robotic applications to SARS-CoV-2 testing, as these can help to reduce risk of transmission of the virus to healthcare staff and patients. We provide an overview of key recent developments in this area. We argue that, although there is some potential for deploying robots to help with SARS-CoV-2 testing, the potential of patient-facing applications is likely to be limited. This is due to the high costs associated with patient-facing functionality, and risks of potentially adverse impacts on healthcare staff work practices and patient interactions. In contrast, back-end lab-based robots dealing with sample extraction and amplification, that effectively integrate with established processes, software and interfaces to process samples, are much more likely to result in safety and efficiency gains. Consideration should therefore be given to deploying these at scale.