Healthcare Chatbots and the Future of Chatbot Technology in Healthcare

Moreover, a healthcare chatbot works as a personal medical assistant that can remind to take medicines, diet, exercise, body weight, and so on. Such AI healthcare chatbot also facilitates communication among medical service providers, insurance companies, and patients. The healthcare industry has experienced a technology shift like ever with the introduction of chatbots. Now, it’s easy and quick to access medical information while facilitating patients with advanced and personalized healthcare solutions. And all credit goes to chatbot technology for enabling it to handle some tasks putting it on autopilot.

• Woebot is a chatbot designed by researchers at Stanford University to provide mental health assistance using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques.
• Aeromexico, KLM, and a handful of other airlines rely on Facebook messenger to host their chatbot platform.
• Through a simple conversational virtual assistant, patient feedback can help you understand patient behavior towards your services and help you improve accordingly.
• Similarly, InnerEye (Microsoft Corp) is a computer-assisted image diagnostic chatbot that recognizes cancers and diseases within the eye but does not directly interact with the user like a chatbot [42].
• AI technologies, especially ML, have increasingly been occupying other industries; thus, these technologies are arguably naturally adapted to the healthcare sector.

That’s what University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers are asking as they dig into patients’ experiences with the artificial intelligence (AI) programs that simulate conversation. With all these processes eliminated by AI technology, healthcare chatbot solutions benefit the medical staff, health institutions, and, of course, patients in different stages of interaction with the previous two. Today, the Intellectsoft experts uncover what is medical chatbot technology and its potential for the healthcare industry development. However, there is a growing opportunity for healthcare chatbots to do much more benefit than current solutions.

Top 5 Use Cases of Chatbots in Healthcare

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. chatbot technology in healthcare Doctors can receive regular automatic updates on the symptoms of their patients’ chronic conditions. All it takes is for the patient to answer a few questions and maybe take a few measurements their chatbot app asks for.

Both of these reviews focused on healthbots that were available in scientific literature only and did not include commercially available apps. Our study leverages and further develops the evaluative criteria developed by Laranjo et al. and Montenegro et al. to assess commercially available health apps9,32. Chatbots can mimic human conversation and entertain users but they are not built only for this. They are useful in applications such as education, information retrieval, business, and e-commerce [4].

4 BUOY HEALTH

A reliable medical chatbot could constitute a seamless interface to information for both patients and healthcare providers. As a patient-oriented tool, it would allow users to obtain disease-related information or book medical appointments (Bates, 2019; Khadija et al., 2021). To our knowledge, our study is the first comprehensive review of healthbots that are commercially available on the Apple iOS store and Google Play stores. Another review conducted by Montenegro et al. developed a taxonomy of healthbots related to health32.

First, it can perform an assessment of a health problem or symptoms and, second, more general assessments of health and well-being. Third, it can perform an ‘assessment of a sickness or its risks’ and guide ‘the resident to receive treatment in services promoting health and well-being within Omaolo and in social and health services external to’ it (THL 2020, p. 14). Fourth, it offers quality-of-life surveys, oral health surveys and health coaching. In the aftermath of COVID-19, Omaolo was updated to include ‘Coronavirus symptoms checker’, a service that ‘gives guidance regarding exposure to and symptoms of COVID-19’ (Atique et al. 2020, p. 2464; Tiirinki et al. 2020). In September 2020, the THL released the mobile contact tracing app Koronavilkku,1 which can collaborate with Omaolo by sharing information and informing the app of positive test cases (THL 2020, p. 14). Furthermore, social distancing and loss of loved ones have taken a toll on people’s mental health.

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Still, it may not work for a doctor seeking information about drug dosages or adverse effects. Babylon Health offers AI-driven consultations with a virtual doctor, a chatbot, and a real doctor. If you look up articles about flu symptoms on WebMD, for instance, a chatbot may pop up with information about flu treatment and current outbreaks in your area. This allows doctors to process prescription refills in batch or automate them in cases where doctor intervention is not necessary. “I’m impressed with LINGO-1’s capabilities,” says Pieter Abbeel, a robotics researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and cofounder of the robotics company Covariant, who has played with a demo of the tech. Abbeel asked LINGO-1 what-if questions like “What would you do if the light were green?

Capacity’s conversational AI platform enables graceful human handoffs and intuitive task management via a powerful workflow automation suite, robust developer platform, and flexible database that can be deployed anywhere. Years ago, being a web developer passionate about the latest technologies, I set up a company for developing non-standard web solutions. Over the last two decades in the IT industry, I have overseen its unstoppable growth and learned some personal insights, which I am happy to share with you.

Studies suggested that failure to show up for the procedure was predominant among underprivileged patients. The solution delivers data about the exam in a non-intrusive explanatory form and sets reminders. These chatbots are equipped with the simplest AI algorithms designed to distribute information via pre-set responses.

With psychiatry-oriented chatbots, people can interact with a virtual mental health ‘professional’ to get some relief. These chatbots are trained on massive data and include natural language processing capabilities to understand users’ concerns and provide appropriate advice. Regulatory standards have been developed to accommodate for rapid modifications and ensure the safety and effectiveness of AI technology, including chatbots.

Engaging Patients & Connecting Care Teams

The first chatbot was designed for individuals with psychological issues [9]; however, they continue to be used for emotional support and psychiatric counseling with their ability to express sympathy and empathy [81]. A study performed on Woebot, developed based on cognitive behavioral therapy, showed that depressive symptoms were significantly reduced, and participants were more receptive https://www.metadialog.com/ than in traditional therapies [41]. This agreed with the Shim results, also using the same type of therapy, which showed that the intervention was highly engaging, improved well-being, and reduced stress [82]. When another chatbot was developed based on the structured association technique counseling method, the user’s motivation was enhanced, and stress was reduced [83].

It’s also not realistic to expect every patient to be on board with digital-care solutions beyond their current use in this pandemic. This means that hospitals could leverage digital humans as health assistants, capable of providing empathetic, around-the-clock aid to patients, particularly before or after their surgery. By taking an all-in-one communication approach, Quincy encourages patients to proactively share their health information, which, in turn, enables care providers to cut costs, improve care quality and boost patient satisfaction. Personalization was defined based on whether the healthbot app as a whole has tailored its content, interface, and functionality to users, including individual user-based or user category-based accommodations. Furthermore, methods of data collection for content personalization were evaluated41.