Cybersecurity in Robotic Healthcare Systems: A Critical Thematic Review of Challenges, Solutions, and Research Directions

Nowadays, Robotic systems are increasingly deployed in the healthcare system to enable modern autonomous delivery, realtime diagnostics, and precision in surgery.However, these contemporary and intelligent machines, connected into complex systems which introduce new cybersecurity challenges that can impact operational availability, data integrity, also threaten patient safety.This review critically examines the recent robotic healthcare systems' current landscape of cybersecurity.By utilizing the CIA security model (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) and socio-technical systems theory.Therefore, we organize the literature into three thematic domains such as: behavioral anomaly detection using machine learning, access control, and secure communication.Each one of the domains is evaluated for its integration potential, limitations, real-world applicability, and theoretical foundations.This review reveals significant research gaps in deployment realism, regulatory alignment, and resilience.This study proposes a comprehensive research direction and agenda to lead future work toward layered and robust ethical cybersecurity frameworks for clinical robotic systems and environments.