How Artificially Intelligent Chatbots Have Impacted the Healthcare Industry
In recent times, organizations have adopted the benefits offered by AI-powered virtual assistants to automate routine tasks and give their clients more attention in customer services, payments, and marketing. <!--more--> The healthcare industry has now adopted this trend. AI creates an environment suitable to improve the patient's health with minimal costs and overheads.
Introduction
AI technology is not new to healthcare. The motive to reduce costs, improve patient recoveries, and enhance data availability has led to various innovations in the industry. These range from early disease diagnosis to the introduction of life-saving medicines.
AI creates many new opportunities across the industry. Furthermore, the latest development is equally promising.
How do chatbots work?
Chatbots utilize Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand, parse and process text and speech effectively. Chatbot Apps have a user-friendly interface and mimic human conversation either through a standalone or web application.
Through advancements in NLP accuracy, chatbots are now complex enough and can be paired with machine learning and be used in a healthcare setting.
Benefits of using chatbots in healthcare
Chatbots significantly ease the burden on Health Care Providers (HCPs) through cost reduction, personalized health, and therapy information.
Below are some of the benefits of using chatbots in the healthcare industry.
Immediate access to care
A chatbot analyzes the patient's symptoms and makes appropriate recommendations depending on the medical issue involved. It also helps in scheduling an appointment with the doctor. If a bot cannot respond to the issue raised, the patient will be passed to the real person.
Chatbots are the first point of contact and automate the triage process. They help in reducing many unnecessary visits to healthcare facilities hence the cost reduction.
Automating administrative tasks
Through automation of many administrative tasks, efficiency is greatly increased and costs significantly reduced. Most of the time, chatbots assist in scheduling doctor's appointments, sending reminders for medication or treatment, connecting patients with suitable HCPs within their areas, and answering frequently asked questions.
Proactive care
Chatbots supplement the work of caregivers by helping the patients improve their overall health and well-being. Applications that can support patient's mental and emotional health have been developed. Others can even help in motivation and provision of guidance on nutrition and exercise.
Challenges of using chatbots in healthcare
The potential benefits of chatbots in healthcare are massive. However, digital entrepreneurs and healthcare leaders need to note that there are specific challenges that they can encounter when trying to ensure the best possible outcomes for healthcare organizations and consumers.
Some of the challenges may include:
Inaccurate medical information
Chatbots may not have all the relevant medical data about a patient. This can lead to an inaccurate diagnosis. Moreover, it can pose a significant risk and a high possibility of harm to the patients. Also, the financial implications of such errors could be huge to the organizations.
Lack of direct human interaction
Chatbots may have the inability to know and understand the patient's emotions. Thus they can misinterpret the true extent of a patient's needs. Also, patients experience may suffer from a lack of human contact, leaving them disconnected from their HCP.
Companies leading the way
Chatbots in the healthcare industry are still in their early stages of development. However, the below are the market-leading innovators that harness the benefits offered by chatbots and therefore pave the way for future development.
Babylon Health
In the year 2014, Babylon Health created their chatbot named Ask Babylon. It was developed to assess the patient's symptoms, provide them with relevant information, and advise them accordingly.
The chatbot asks a patient many questions and, in turn, by using machine learning algorithms, compares given information to known conditions, illnesses, risk factors, and statistics to reach the final decision. Whenever necessary, users can then be connected to Babylon's doctors and specialists via video chat or audio chat, with care at any time, any day.
Ada Health
Ada Health works the same as Ask Babylon. It asks patients questions and then compares their answers with many similar cases. The chatbot then provides the patient with relevant information from its Medical Library to help them manage their health condition. Ada's app enjoys millions of users and comes in several different languages. The app has been used to do millions of health assessments worldwide.
WoeBot Health
WoeBot uses Artificial Intelligence to provide mental and emotional support to patients in need, using a chat-based tool. It uses brief conversations to ask the patients questions and evaluate their emotional state. It then offers appropriate interventions based on the patient's circumstances. It has an app that exchanges millions of users' messages weekly. It also has a high accuracy rate in identifying a patient's crisis language.
Conclusion
The role of chatbots is constantly augmenting the work of healthcare professionals and not replacing them. The benefits of using chatbots, as discussed earlier, are immense.
They cut on costs and increase efficiency, reducing the strain on healthcare providers and increasing patient outcomes. The current challenges of chatbots on accuracy and lack of human contact are best suited for non-urgent and routine tasks.
In the future, as NLP and machine learning algorithms improve, chatbots will be more useful in complex applications.
Happy learning!
Peer Review Contributions by: Lalithnarayan C
