The Face of Robots (part 1)

I heard an interesting piece this morning on the radio about a robot being used at a hospital. A family in a California hospital was huddled around the bed of their 78 year old grandfather, who had a failing lung condition. While they waited anxiously for the doctor's diagnosis, they hoped desperately that there could be good news. Unexpectedly, a robot wheeled in to the room, with a video screen for a face, which displayed a live video feed of their doctor—somewhere else in the hospital. The doctor delivered the bad news through the robot that the hospital had run out of effective treatments, and the grandfather was going to die. He would not be able to return home for hospice care, and would have to spend his last days in the hospital using morphine to ease his suffering. The audio through the robot was not entirely clear, and the grandaughter that was present had to restate and convey the sad information to her grandfather herself, because he could not understand what the robot had said. How much of the human element is going to be replaced by robots in our future?