Chatbots in Healthcare 10 Use Cases + Development Guide

Undoubtedly, medical chatbots will become more accurate, but that alone won’t be enough to ensure their successful acceptance in the healthcare industry. As the healthcare industry is a mix of empathy and treatments, a similar balance will have to be created for chatbots to become more successful and accepted in the future. A healthcare chatbot example for this use case can be seen in Woebot, which is one of the most effective chatbots in the mental health industry, offering Chat PG CBT, mindfulness, and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Several healthcare service companies are converting FAQs by adding an interactive healthcare chatbot to answer consumers’ general questions. The chatbots can use the information and assist the patients in identifying the illness responsible for their symptoms based on the pre-fetched inputs. The patient can decide what level of therapies and medications are required using an interactive bot and the data it provides.

The healthcare chatbot tackles this issue by closely monitoring the cancellation of appointments and reports it to the hospital staff immediately. While chatbots can never fully replace human doctors, they can serve as primary healthcare consultants and assist individuals with their everyday health concerns. This will allow doctors and healthcare professionals to focus on more complex tasks while chatbots handle lower-level tasks. When every second counts, chatbots in the healthcare industry rapidly deliver useful information. For instance, chatbot technology in healthcare can promptly give the doctor information on the patient’s history, illnesses, allergies, check-ups, and other conditions if the patient runs with an attack.

Such a scenario can potentially amplify healthcare disparities, as it may lead to certain demographics being underserved or wrongly diagnosed (19). The level of conversation and rapport-building at this stage for the medical professional to convince the patient could well overwhelm the saving of time and effort at the initial stages. In the case of Tessa, a wellness chatbot provided harmful recommendations due to errors in the development stage and poor training data.

With AI technology, chatbots can answer questions much faster – and, in some cases, better – than a human assistant would be able to. Chatbots can also be programmed to recognize when a patient needs assistance the most, such as in the case of an emergency or during a medical crisis when someone needs to see a doctor right away. While AI-powered chatbots have been instrumental in transforming the healthcare landscape, their implementation and integration have many challenges. This section outlines the major limitations and hurdles in the deployment of AI chatbot solutions in healthcare.

Instead of having to navigate the system themselves and make mistakes that increase costs, patients can let healthcare chatbots guide them through the system more effectively. If patients have started filling out an intake form or pre-appointment form on your website but did not complete it, send them a reminder with a chatbot. Better yet, ask them the questions you need answered through a conversation with your AI chatbot. This allows for a more relaxed and conversational approach to providing critical information for their file with your healthcare center or pharmacy.

It proved the LLM’s effectiveness in precise diagnosis and appropriate treatment recommendations. A health insurance bot guides your customers from understanding the basics of health insurance to getting a quote. Information on working hours, medical facilities addresses, doctors’ shifts, emergency lines, etc. Our 150+ customers value our deep industry knowledge, proactivity, and attention to detail. Once again, go back to the roots and think of your target audience in the context of their needs. Hospitals can use chatbots for follow-up interactions, ensuring adherence to treatment plans and minimizing readmissions.

Wysa AI Coach also employs evidence-based techniques like CBT, DBT, meditation, breathing, yoga, motivational interviewing, and micro-actions to help patients build mental resilience skills. A chatbot can chatbot technology in healthcare monitor available slots and manage patient meetings with doctors and nurses with a click. As for healthcare chatbot examples, Kyruus assists users in scheduling appointments with medical professionals.

This immediacy empowers healthcare providers to promptly identify patients at elevated risk, facilitating timely interventions that can be pivotal in determining patient outcomes. Appointment scheduling and management represent another vital area where chatbots streamline processes. Patients can easily book appointments, receive reminders, and even reschedule appointments through chatbot interactions (6). This convenience not only benefits patients but also reduces the administrative workload on healthcare providers. Initially, chatbots served rudimentary roles, primarily providing informational support and facilitating tasks like appointment scheduling. A well-designed healthcare chatbot can plan appointments based on the doctor’s availability.

Only through such multi-faceted efforts can we hope to leverage the potential of AI chatbots in healthcare while ensuring that their benefits are equitably distributed (16). In the future, healthcare chatbots will get better at interacting with patients. The industry will flourish as more messaging bots become deeply integrated into healthcare systems.

Historical evolution of chatbots in healthcare

With the use of sentiment analysis, a well-designed healthcare chatbot with natural language processing (NLP) can comprehend user intent. The bot can suggest suitable healthcare plans based on how it interprets human input. By automating all of a medical representative’s routine and lower-level responsibilities, chatbots in the healthcare industry are extremely time-saving for professionals.

Some diagnostic tests, such as MRIs, CT scans, and biopsy results, require specialized knowledge and expertise to interpret accurately. Human medical professionals are better equipped to analyze these tests and deliver accurate diagnoses. AI chatbots cannot perform surgeries or invasive procedures, which require the expertise, skill, and precision of human surgeons. Launching an informative campaign can help raise awareness of illnesses and how to treat certain diseases. Before flu season, launch a campaign to help patients prevent colds and flu, send out campaigns on heart attacks in women, strokes, or how to check for breast lumps. These campaigns can be sent to relevant audiences that will find them useful and can help patients become more aware and proactive about their health.

Chatbots provide quick and helpful information that is crucial, especially in emergency situations. Any firm, particularly those in the healthcare sector, can first demand the ability to scale the assistance. A website might not be able to answer every question on its own, but a chatbot that is easy to use can answer more questions and provide a personal touch. #2 Medical chatbots access and handle huge data loads, making them a target for security threats. Patients can request prescription refilling/renewal via a medical chatbot and receive electronic prescriptions (when verified by a physician).

AI-powered chatbots have been one of the year’s top topics, with ChatGPT, Bard, and other conversational agents taking center stage. For healthcare businesses, the adoption of chatbots may become a strategic advantage. Discover what they are in healthcare and their game-changing potential for business. Most patients prefer to book appointments online instead of making phone calls or sending messages.

A chatbot is an automated tool designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with human users. Set up messaging flows via your healthcare chatbot to help patients better manage their illnesses. For example, healthcare providers can create message flows for patients who are preparing for gastric bypass surgery to help them stay accountable on the diet and exercise prescribed by their doctor. If you aren’t already using a chatbot for appointment management, then it’s almost certain your phone lines are constantly ringing and busy. With an AI chatbot, patients can send a message to your clinic, asking to book, reschedule, or cancel appointments without the hassle of waiting on hold for long periods of time. Using an AI chatbot can make the entire experience more personal and give them the impression they are speaking with a human.

What is the Future of Healthcare Chatbots?

Use video or voice to transfer patients to speak directly with a healthcare professional. An AI chatbot is also trained to understand when it can no longer assist a patient, so it can easily transfer patients to speak with a representative or healthcare professional and avoid any unpleasant experiences. Before a diagnostic appointment or testing, patients often need to prepare in advance. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Use an AI chatbot to send automated messages, videos, images, and advice to patients in preparation for their appointment.

In the context of remote patient monitoring, AI-driven chatbots excel at processing and interpreting the wealth of data garnered from wearable devices and smart home systems. Their applications span from predicting exacerbations in chronic conditions such as heart failure and diabetes to aiding in the early detection of infectious diseases like COVID-19 (10, 11). Table 2 provides an overview of popular AI-powered Telehealth chatbot tools and their annual revenue. For instance, DeepMind Health, a pioneering initiative backed by Google, has introduced Streams, a mobile tool infused with AI capabilities, including chatbots. Streams represents a departure from traditional patient management systems, harnessing advanced machine learning algorithms to enable swift evaluation of patient results.

In addition to answering the patient’s questions, prescriptive chatbots offer actual medical advice based on the information provided by the user. To do that, the application must employ NLP algorithms and have the latest knowledge base to draw insights. In conclusion, it is paramount that we remain steadfast in our ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes and quality of care in this digital frontier. The swift adoption of ChatGPT and similar technologies highlights the growing importance and impact of AI chatbots in transforming healthcare services and enhancing patient care. As AI chatbots continue to evolve and improve, they are expected to play an even more significant role in healthcare, further streamlining processes and optimizing resource allocation. Healthcare chatbots are intelligent assistants used by medical centers and medical professionals to help patients get assistance faster.

They can help with FAQs, appointment booking, reminders, and other repetitive questions or queries that often overload medical offices. Within the realm of telemedicine, chatbots equipped with AI capabilities excel at preliminary patient assessments, assisting in case prioritization, and providing valuable decision support for healthcare providers. A noteworthy example is TytoCare’s telehealth platform, where AI-driven chatbots guide patients through self-examination procedures during telemedicine consultations, ensuring the integrity of collected data (9).

What are the benefits of healthcare chatbots?

Healthcare Chatbot is an AI-powered software that uses machine learning algorithms or computer programs to interact with leads in auditory or textual modes. Medical chatbots offer a solution to monitor one’s health and wellness routine, including calorie intake, water consumption, physical activity, and sleep patterns. They can suggest tailored meal plans, prompt medication reminders, and motivate individuals to seek specialized care.

Informative chatbots offer the least intrusive approach, gently easing the patient into the system of medical knowledge. That’s why they’re often the chatbot of choice for mental health support or addiction rehabilitation services. Integrating AI into healthcare presents various ethical and legal challenges, including questions of accountability in cases of AI decision-making errors.

With this in mind, customized AI chatbots are becoming a necessity for today’s healthcare businesses. The technology takes on the routine work, allowing physicians to focus more on severe medical cases. Now, let’s explore the main applications of artificial intelligence chatbots in healthcare in more detail.

Advantages of chatbots in healthcare

They can also be used to determine whether a certain situation is an emergency or not. This allows the patient to be taken care of fast and can be helpful during future doctor’s or nurse’s appointments. Although AI chatbots can provide support and resources for mental health issues, they cannot replicate the empathy and nuanced understanding that human therapists offer during counseling sessions [6,8]. With that being said, we could end up seeing AI chatbots helping with diagnosing illnesses or prescribing medication.

These human traits are invaluable in effective patient care, especially when nuanced language interpretation and non-verbal cues come into play. AI chatbots are limited to operating on pre-set data and algorithms; the quality of their recommendations is only as good as the data fed into them, and any substandard or biased data could result in harmful outputs. In the context of patient engagement, chatbots have emerged as valuable tools for remote monitoring and chronic disease management (7). These chatbots assist patients in tracking vital signs, medication adherence, and symptom reporting, enabling healthcare professionals to intervene proactively when necessary.

Physicians must also be kept in the loop about the possible uncertainties of the chatbot and its diagnoses, such that they can avoid worrying about potential inaccuracies in the outcomes and predictions of the algorithm. Existing commercial chatbot systems suffer from high drop-out rates, as they are programmed to follow a strict logical flow diagram. We use a three-tier architecture to minimize drop-out and to help improve the flow over time. Existing commercial chatbot platforms rely on a set of rules to guide the goal-oriented conversation. For example, the bot asks the patient to enter their symptom, then if they want to make an appointment, and if yes, asks for the preferred days, and so on.

This is a symptom checking chatbot that connects patients to various healthcare services. This chatbot template collects reviews from patients after they have availed your healthcare services. This is a simple website chatbot for dentists to help book appointments and showcase different services and procedures. Here are five types of healthcare chatbots that are frequently used, along with their templates.

By enabling healthcare services to transcend geographical barriers, chatbots empower patients with unparalleled access to care while relieving the strain on overburdened healthcare facilities (8). They have become versatile tools, contributing to various facets of healthcare communication and delivery. Chatbots embedded in healthcare websites and mobile apps offer users real-time access to medical information, assisting in self-diagnosis and health education (5). Healthcare communication is a multifaceted domain that encompasses interactions between patients, healthcare providers, caregivers, and the broader healthcare ecosystem. Effective communication has long been recognized as a fundamental element of quality healthcare delivery. It plays a pivotal role in patient education, adherence to treatment plans, early detection of health issues, and overall patient satisfaction.

• The solution provides information about insurance coverage, benefits, and claims information, allowing users to track and handle their health insurance-related needs conveniently.
• In the context of remote patient monitoring, AI-driven chatbots excel at processing and interpreting the wealth of data garnered from wearable devices and smart home systems.
• The landscape of healthcare communication is undergoing a profound transformation in the digital age, and at the heart of this evolution are AI-powered chatbots.
• In fact, according to Salesforce, 86% of customers would rather get answers from a chatbot than fill out a website form.
• A US-based care solutions provider got a patient mobile app integrated with a medical chatbot.

It revolutionizes the quality of patient experience by attending to your patient’s needs instantly. This chatbot template provides details on the availability of doctors and allows patients to choose a slot for their appointment. Patients can book appointments directly from the chatbot, which can be programmed to assign a doctor, send an email to the doctor with patient information, and create a slot in both the patient’s and the doctor’s calendar. In the event of a medical emergency, chatbots can instantly provide doctors with patient information such as medical history, allergies, past records, check-ups, and other important details. In order to evaluate a patient’s symptoms and assess their medical condition without having them visit a hospital, chatbots are currently being employed more and more.

Our AI chatbot technology in healthcare makes it so that staying compliant with patient data is easy, with no extra work required. The use of chatbots in healthcare helps improve the performance of medical staff by enabling automation. However, chatbots in healthcare still can make errors when providing responses. According to an MGMA Stat poll, about 49% of medical groups said that the rates of ‘no-shows‘ soared since 2021. No-show appointments result in a considerable loss of revenue and underutilize the physician’s time.

Collects Data and Engages Easily

They can be powered by AI (artificial intelligence) and NLP (natural language processing). While AI chatbots offer many benefits, it is critical to understand their limitations. Currently, AI lacks the capacity to demonstrate empathy, intuition, and the years of experience that medical professionals bring to the table [6].

It uses natural language processing to engage its users in positive and understanding conversations from anywhere at any time. A healthcare chatbot also sends out gentle reminders to patients for the consumption of medicines at the right time when requested by the doctor or the patient. The idea of a digital personal assistant is tempting, but a healthcare chatbot goes a mile beyond that. From patient care to intelligent use of finances, its benefits are wide-ranging and make it a top priority in the Healthcare industry. With regard to health concerns, individuals often have a plethora of questions, both minor and major, that need immediate clarification.

It allows multiple participants to collaboratively train a machine learning model without sharing their raw data. Instead, the model is trained locally on each participant’s device or server using their respective data, and only the updated model parameters are shared with a central server or coordinator. Another ethical issue that is often noticed is that the use of technology is frequently overlooked, with mechanical issues being pushed to the front over human interactions. The effects that digitalizing healthcare can have on medical practice are especially concerning, especially on clinical decision-making in complex situations that have moral overtones. As chatbots remove diagnostic opportunities from the physician’s field of work, training in diagnosis and patient communication may deteriorate in quality. Despite the obvious pros of using healthcare chatbots, they also have major drawbacks.

AI chatbots provide basic informational support to patients (e.g., offers information on visiting hours, address) and performs simple tasks like appointment scheduling, handling of prescription renewal requests. AI-powered healthcare chatbots are capable of handling simple inquiries with ease and provide a convenient way for users to research information. In many cases, these self-service tools are also a more personal way of interacting with healthcare services than browsing a website or communicating with an outsourced call center.

The goal should be to leverage both AI and human expertise to optimize patient outcomes, orchestrating a harmonious symphony of humans and technology. While advancements in AI and machine learning could lead to more sophisticated chatbots, their potential to entirely replace medical professionals remains remote. This future, however, depends on various factors, including technological breakthroughs, patient and provider acceptance, ethical and legal resolutions, and regulatory frameworks.

Depending on the specific use case scenario, chatbots possess various levels of intelligence and have datasets of different sizes at their disposal. Only limited by network connection and server performance, bots respond to requests instantaneously. And since chatbots are often based on SaaS (software as a service) packages from major players like AWS, there’s no shortage of resources. Speed up time to resolution and automate patient interactions with 14 AI use case examples for the healthcare industry. Nonetheless, the problem of algorithmic bias is not solely restricted to the nature of the training data. One of these is biased feature selection, where selecting features used to train the model can lead to biased outcomes, particularly if these features correlate with sensitive attributes such as race or gender (21).

Customized chat technology helps patients avoid unnecessary lab tests or expensive treatments. With so many algorithms and tools around, knowing the different types of chatbots in healthcare is key. This will help you to choose the right tools or find the right experts to build a chat agent that suits your users’ https://chat.openai.com/ needs. Chatbots in the healthcare industry provide support by recommending coping strategies for various mental health problems. A conversational bot can examine the patient’s symptoms and offer potential diagnoses. This also helps medical professionals stay updated about any changes in patient symptoms.

These issues necessitate not only technological advancements but also robust regulatory measures to ensure responsible AI usage [3]. The increasing use of AI chatbots in healthcare highlights ethical considerations, particularly concerning privacy, security, and transparency. To protect sensitive patient information from breaches, developers must implement robust security protocols, such as encryption. Addressing these ethical and legal concerns is crucial for the responsible and effective implementation of AI chatbots in healthcare, ultimately enhancing healthcare delivery while safeguarding patient interests [9]. Navigating regulatory landscapes can present significant hurdles for AI chatbots in healthcare (30).

Taking the lead in AI projects since 1989, ScienceSoft’s experienced teams identified challenges when developing medical chatbots and worked out the ways to resolve them. A chatbot can send reminders like taking medication or measuring vitals to patients. In case of an emergency, a chatbot can send an alert to a doctor via an integrated physician app or EHR.

The chatbot can easily converse with patients and answer any important questions they have at any time of day. The chatbot can also help remind patients of certain criteria to follow such as when to start fasting or how much water to drink before their appointment. Moreover, model overfitting, where a model learns the training data too well and is unable to generalize to unseen data, can also exacerbate bias (21). This is particularly concerning in healthcare, where the chatbot’s predictions may influence critical decisions such as diagnosis or treatment (23). SmartBot360’s chatbot technology consists of a three-tier architecture to power the AI chatbot for healthcare to solve this problem while improving the flow over time.

However, many patients find it challenging to use an application for appointment scheduling due to reasons like slow applications, multilevel information requirements, and so on. As more and more businesses recognize the benefits of chatbots to automate their systems, the adoption rate will keep increasing. The healthcare chatbot market is predicted to reach $944.65 million by 2032 from $230.28 million in 2023.

Patients may need assistance with anything from recognizing symptoms to organizing operations at any time. ScienceSoft’s software engineers and data scientists prioritize the reliability and safety of medical chatbots and use the following technologies. Using AI to imitate an actual conversation, medical chatbots will send personalized messages to users. If the condition is not too severe, a chatbot can help by asking a few simple questions and comparing the answers with the patient’s medical history. A chatbot like that can be part of emergency helper software with broader functionality. The chatbot called Aiden is designed to impart CPR and First Aid knowledge using easily digestible, concise text messages.