Healthcare Chatbots: Benefits, Use Cases, and Top Tools

Although, if you’re looking for a basic chatbot assisting your website visitors, we advise you to take a look at some existing solutions like Smith.ai, Acobot, or Botsify. The Indian government also launched a WhatsApp-based interactive chatbot called MyGov Corona Helpdesk that provides verified information and news about the pandemic to users in India. We recommend using ready-made SDKs, libraries, and APIs to keep the chatbot development budget under control. This practice lowers the cost of building the app, but it also speeds up the time to market significantly. These are the tech measures, policies, and procedures that protect and control access to electronic health data. Furthermore, this rule requires that workforce members only have access to PHI as appropriate for their roles and job functions.

Despite the initial chatbot hype dwindling down, medical chatbots still have the potential to improve the healthcare industry. The three main areas where they can be particularly useful include diagnostics, patient engagement outside medical facilities, and mental health. At least, that’s what CB Insights analysts are bringing forward in their healthcare chatbot market research, generally saying that the future of chatbots in the healthcare industry looks bright.

Improved user engagement

Similarly, a graph-based chatbot has been proposed to identify the mood of users through sentimental analysis and provide human-like responses to comfort patients [84]. Vivobot (HopeLab, Inc) provides cognitive and behavioral interventions to deliver positive psychology skills and promote well-being. This psychiatric counseling chatbot was effective in engaging users and reducing anxiety in young adults after cancer treatment [40]. The limitation to the abovementioned studies was that most participants were young adults, most likely because of the platform on which the chatbots were available. In addition, longer follow-up periods with larger and more diverse sample sizes are needed for future studies.

This is followed by the display of possible diagnoses and the steps the user should take to address the issue – just like a patient symptom tracking tool. This AI chatbot for healthcare has built-in speech recognition and natural language processing to analyze speech and text to produce relevant outputs. Healthcare payers and providers, including medical assistants, are also beginning to leverage these AI-enabled tools to simplify patient care and cut unnecessary costs. Whenever a patient strikes up a conversation with a medical representative who may sound human but underneath is an intelligent conversational machine — we see a healthcare chatbot in the medical field in action. While chatbots are valuable tools in healthcare, they cannot replace human doctors entirely. They can provide immediate responses to common queries and assist with basic tasks, but complex medical diagnoses and treatments require the expertise of trained professionals.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Chatbots can act as virtual assistants, gathering information about a patient’s symptoms and providing initial recommendations from a doctor. This helps streamline the process by identifying urgent cases that require immediate attention from healthcare professionals at the hospital. For instance, if a patient reports severe chest pain, the chatbot can quickly recognize it as a potential heart attack symptom and advise seeking emergency medical assistance at the hospital. For example, IBM’s Watson for Oncology examines data from records and medical notes to generate an evidence-based treatment plan for oncologists [34].

Even after addressing these issues and establishing the safety or efficacy of chatbots, human elements in health care will not be replaceable. Therefore, chatbots have the potential to be integrated into clinical practice by working alongside health practitioners to reduce costs, refine workflow efficiencies, and improve patient outcomes. Other applications in pandemic support, global health, and education are yet to be fully explored. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has driven the use of chatbots in public health, of concern is the degree to which governments have accessed information under the rubric of security in the fight against the disease. The sharing of health data gathered through symptom checking for COVID-19 by commercial entities and government agencies presents a further challenge for data privacy laws and jurisdictional boundaries [51].

Open up the NLU training file and modify the default data appropriately for your chatbot. An effective UI aims to bring chatbot interactions to a natural conversation as close as possible. And this involves arranging design elements in simple patterns to make navigation easy and comfortable. These platforms have different elements that developers can use for creating the best chatbot UIs. Almost all of these platforms have vibrant visuals that provide information in the form of texts, buttons, and imagery to make navigation and interaction effortless. 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.

Using a combination of data-driven natural language processing with knowledge-driven diagnostics, this chatbot interviews the patient, understands their chief complaints, and submits reports to physicians for further analysis [43]. Similarly, Sense.ly (Sense.ly, Inc) acts as a web-based nurse to assist in monitoring appointments, managing patients’ conditions, and suggesting therapies. Another chatbot that reduces the burden on clinicians and decreases wait time is Careskore (CareShore, Inc), which tracks vitals and anticipates the need for hospital admissions [42].

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This not only reduces operational expenses but also increases overall efficiency within healthcare facilities. One of the key benefits of using AI chatbots in healthcare is their ability to provide educational content. Patients can use chatbots to receive valuable information about their health conditions directly, empowering them with knowledge to make informed decisions about their well-being.

• In terms of cancer therapy, remote monitoring can support patients by enabling higher dose chemotherapy drug delivery, reducing secondary hospitalizations, and providing health benefits after surgery [73-75].
• Some experts also believe doctors will recommend chatbots to patients with ongoing health issues.
• Through virtual interactions, patients can easily consult with healthcare professionals without leaving their homes.

However, some of these were sketches of the interface rather than the final user interface, and most of the screenshots had insufficient description as to what the capabilities were. Although the technical descriptions of chatbots might constitute separate papers in their own right, these descriptions were outside the scope for our focus on evidence in public health. A further scoping study would be useful in updating the distribution of the technical strategies being used for COVID-19–related chatbots. Woebot is among the best examples of chatbots in healthcare in the context of a mental health support solution.

Just as patients seeking information from a doctor would be more comfortable and better engaged by a friendly and compassionate doctor, conversational styles for chatbots also have to be designed to embody these personal qualities. Similarly, conversational style for a healthcare bot for people with mental health problems such as depression or anxiety must maintain sensitivity, respect, and appropriate vocabulary. Although prescriptive chatbots are conversational by design, they are built not just to answer questions or provide direction, but to offer therapeutic solutions. The advantages of chatbots in healthcare are enormous – and all stakeholders share the benefits. Chatbots have already gained traction in retail, news media, social media, banking, and customer service.

The bot offers healthcare providers data the right information on drug dosage, adverse drug effects, and the right therapeutic option for various diseases. This chatbot solution for healthcare helps patients get all the details they need about a cancer-related topic in one place. It also assists healthcare providers by serving info to cancer patients and their families. This free AI-enabled chatbot allows you to input your symptoms and get the most likely diagnoses. Trained with machine learning models that enable the app to give accurate or near-accurate diagnoses, YourMd provides useful health tips and information about your symptoms as well as verified evidence-based solutions.

Implicit to digital technologies such as chatbots are the levels of efficiency and scale that open new possibilities for health care provision that can extend individual-level health care at a population level. Chatbots with access to medical databases retrieve information on doctors, available slots, doctor schedules, etc. Patients can manage appointments, find healthcare providers, and get reminders through mobile calendars. This way, appointment-scheduling chatbots in the healthcare industry streamline communication and scheduling processes.

This “AI-powered health assistant” will integrate seamlessly with each care team to fully support the patient‘s physical, mental, social and financial health needs. You have probably heard of this platform, for it boasts of catering to almost 13 million users as of 2023. Ada Health is a popular healthcare app that understands symptoms and manages patient care instantaneously with a reliable AI-powered database. 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. According to an MGMA Stat poll, about 49% of medical groups said that the rates of ‘no-shows‘ soared since 2021.

From catching up on sports news to navigating bank applications to playing conversation-based games on Facebook Messenger, chatbots are revolutionizing the way we live. This global experience will impact the healthcare industry’s dependence on chatbots, and might provide broad and new chatbot implementation opportunities in the future. Chatbots can extract patient information by asking simple questions such as their name, address, symptoms, current doctor, and insurance details. The chatbots then, through EDI, store this information in the medical facility database to facilitate patient admission, symptom tracking, doctor-patient communication, and medical record keeping.

Seventy-nine percent apps did not have any of the security features assessed and only 10 apps reported HIPAA compliance. There is no doubting the extent to which the use of AI, including chatbots, will continue to grow in public health. The ethical dilemmas this growth presents are considerable, and we would do well to be wary of the enchantment of new technologies [59]. For example, the recently published WHO Guidance on the Ethics and Governance of AI in Health [10] is a big step toward achieving these goals and developing a human rights framework around the use of AI. However, as Privacy International commented in a review of the WHO guidelines, the guidelines do not go far enough in challenging the assumption that the use of AI will inherently lead to better outcomes [60]. In this respect, the synthesis between population-based prevention and clinical care at an individual level [15] becomes particularly relevant.

Rarhi et al [33] proposed a similar design that provides a diagnosis based on symptoms, measures the seriousness, and connects users with a physician if needed [33]. In general, these systems may greatly help individuals in conducting daily check-ups, increase awareness of their health status, and encourage users to seek medical assistance for early intervention. Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of transforming numerous aspects of our lives by modifying the way we analyze information and improving decision-making through problem solving, use of chatbots in healthcare reasoning, and learning. Machine learning (ML) is a subset of AI that improves its performance based on the data provided to a generic algorithm from experience rather than defining rules in traditional approaches [1]. Advancements in ML have provided benefits in terms of accuracy, decision-making, quick processing, cost-effectiveness, and handling of complex data [2]. Chatbots, also known as chatter robots, smart bots, conversational agents, digital assistants, or intellectual agents, are prime examples of AI systems that have evolved from ML.

He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School. Chatbots are integrated into the medical facility database to extract information about suitable physicians, available slots, clinics, and pharmacies  working days. In the United States alone, more than half of healthcare leaders, 56% to be precise, noted that the value brought by AI exceeded their expectations. Quality assurance specialists should evaluate the chatbot’s responses across different scenarios. It’s recommended to develop an AI chatbot as a distinctive microservice so that it can be easily connected with other software solutions via API. Also, they will help you define the flow of every use case, including input artifacts and required third-party software integrations.

These bots can help patients stay on track with their healthcare goals and manage chronic conditions more effectively by providing personalized support and assistance. Chatbots can handle a large volume of patient inquiries, reducing the workload of healthcare professionals and allowing them to focus on more complex tasks. This increased efficiency can result in better patient outcomes and a higher quality of care.

Another chatbot designed by Harshitha et al [27] uses dialog flow to provide an initial analysis of breast cancer symptoms. It has been proven to be 95% accurate in differentiating between normal and cancerous images. A study of 3 mobile app–based chatbot symptom checkers, Babylon (Babylon Health, Inc), Your.md (Healthily, Inc), and Ada (Ada, Inc), indicated that sensitivity remained low at 33% for the detection of head and neck cancer [28]. The number of studies assessing the development, implementation, and effectiveness are still relatively limited compared with the diversity of chatbots currently available. Further studies are required to establish the efficacy across various conditions and populations.

From those who have a coronavirus symptom scare to those with other complaints, AI-driven chatbots may become part of hospitals’ plans to meet patients’ needs during the lockdown. Many health professionals have taken to telemedicine to consult with their patients, allay fears, and provide prescriptions. The challenge here for software developers is to keep training chatbots on COVID-19-related verified updates and research data. As researchers uncover new symptom patterns, these details need to be integrated into the ML training data to enable a bot to make an accurate assessment of a user’s symptoms at any given time. Let’s create a contextual chatbot called E-Pharm, which will provide a user – let’s say a doctor – with drug information, drug reactions, and local pharmacy stores where drugs can be purchased.

He advised businesses on their enterprise software, automation, cloud, AI / ML and other technology related decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem’s work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.

Conversational chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU), applications of AI that enable machines to understand human language and intent. Today, chatbots offer diagnosis of symptoms, mental healthcare consultation, nutrition facts and tracking, and more. For example, in 2020 WhatsApp collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) to make a chatbot service that answers users’ questions on COVID-19.

For example, Medical Sieve (IBM Corp) is a chatbot that examines radiological images to aid and communicate with cardiologists and radiologists to identify issues quickly and reliably [24]. 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]. Even with the rapid advancements of AI in cancer imaging, a major issue is the lack of a gold standard [58]. To facilitate this assessment, we develop and present an evaluative framework that classifies the key characteristics of healthbots. Concerns over the unknown and unintelligible “black boxes” of ML have limited the adoption of NLP-driven chatbot interventions by the medical community, despite the potential they have in increasing and improving access to healthcare.

The timeline for the studies, illustrated in Figure 3, is not surprising given the huge upsurge of interest in chatbots from 2016 onward. Although health services generally have lagged behind other sectors in the uptake and use of chatbots, there has been greater interest in application domains such as mental health since 2016. The rapid adoption of AI chatbots in healthcare leads to the rapid development of medical-oriented large language models.

The systematic literature review and chatbot database search includes a few limitations. The literature review and chatbot search were all conducted by a single reviewer, which could have potentially introduced bias and limited findings. In addition, our review explored a broad range of health care topics, and some areas could have been elaborated upon and explored more deeply. Furthermore, only a limited number of studies were included for each subtopic of chatbots for oncology apps because of the scarcity of studies addressing this topic. Future studies should consider refining the search strategy to identify other potentially relevant sources that may have been overlooked and assign multiple reviews to limit individual bias. Health care data are highly sensitive because of the risk of stigmatization and discrimination if the information is wrongfully disclosed.

Remote Monitoring for Enhanced Post-Operative Care

Chatbots provide patients with a more personalized experience, making them feel more connected to their healthcare providers. Chatbots can help patients feel more comfortable and involved in their healthcare by conversationally engaging with them. Healthcare providers must ensure that privacy laws and ethical standards handle patient data. AI chatbots are used in healthcare to provide patients with a more personalized experience while reducing the workload of healthcare professionals. The app helps people with addictions  by sending daily challenges designed around a particular stage of recovery and teaching them how to get rid of drugs and alcohol. The chatbot provides users with evidence-based tips, relying on a massive patient data set, plus, it works really well alongside other treatment models or can be used on its own.

Research indicates chatbots improve retention of health education content by over 40% compared to traditional written materials. For instance, the startup Sense.ly provides a chatbot specifically focused on managing care plans for chronic disease patients. Studies show they can improve outcomes by 15-20% for chronic disease management programs. LeadSquared’s CRM is an entirely HIPAA-compliant software that will integrate with your healthcare chatbot smoothly. Healthily is an AI-enabled health-tech platform that offers patients personalized health information through a chatbot. From generic tips to research-backed cures, Healthily gives patients control over improving their health while sitting at home.

Unfortunately, even the most advanced technology is not perfect, and we are talking about AI-powered bots here. Thus, you need to be extra cautious when programming a bot and there should be an option of contacting a medical professional in the case of any concern. A chatbot can serve many more purposes than simply providing information Chat PG and answering questions. Below, we’ll look at the most widespread chatbot types and their main areas of operation. 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.

AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per similarWeb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month. Cem’s work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur.

That’s why hybrid chatbots – combining artificial intelligence and human intellect – can achieve better results than standalone AI powered solutions. For example, it may be almost impossible for a healthcare chat bot to give an accurate diagnosis based on symptoms for complex conditions. While chatbots that serve as symptom checkers could accurately generate differential diagnoses of an array of symptoms, it will take a doctor, in many cases, to investigate or query further to reach an accurate diagnosis. Doctors also have a virtual assistant chatbot that supplies them with necessary info – Safedrugbot.

This relays to the user that the responses have been verified by medical professionals. A drug bot answering questions about drug dosages and interactions should structure its responses for doctors and patients differently. Hyro is an adaptive communications platform that replaces common-place intent-based AI chatbots with language-based conversational AI, built from NLU, knowledge graphs, and computational linguistics.

This reduces unnecessary burden on healthcare providers while ensuring that those who genuinely require medical attention receive it promptly. Another valuable use case for healthcare AI chatbots is providing medication reminders and helping patients manage chronic conditions effectively with the assistance of a medical procedure. By sending regular reminders through messaging platforms, chatbots ensure that patients adhere to their prescribed medication schedules. They can offer educational resources about the condition, provide tips for self-care, and answer common questions related to managing chronic illnesses. This support, facilitated by the doctor using AI technology, empowers patients to take control of their health and promotes better adherence to treatment plans.

Patients love speaking to real-life doctors, and artificial intelligence is what makes chatbots sound more human. In fact, some chatbots with complex self-learning algorithms can successfully maintain in-depth, nearly human-like conversations. Chatbots can provide insurance services and healthcare resources to patients and insurance plan members.

With chatbots implemented in cancer care, consultations for minor health concerns may be avoided, which allows clinicians to spend more time with patients who need their attention the most. For example, the workflow can be streamlined by assisting physicians in administrative tasks, such as scheduling appointments, providing medical information, or locating clinics. Research on the recent advances in AI that have allowed conversational agents more realistic interactions with humans is still in its infancy in the public health domain. There is still little evidence in the form of clinical trials and in-depth qualitative studies to support widespread chatbot use, which are particularly necessary in domains as sensitive as mental health. Most of the chatbots used in supporting areas such as counseling and therapeutic services are still experimental or in trial as pilots and prototypes.

Healthcare providers can overcome this challenge by investing in data integration technologies that allow chatbots to access patient data in real-time. While chatbots can provide personalized support to patients, they cannot replace the human touch. Healthcare providers must ensure that chatbots are used in conjunction with, and not as a replacement for human healthcare professionals. With the eHealth chatbot, users submit their symptoms, and the app runs them against a database of thousands of conditions that fit the mold.

For each app, data on the number of downloads were abstracted for five countries with the highest numbers of downloads over the previous 30 days. Chatbot apps were downloaded globally, including in several African and Asian countries with more limited smartphone penetration. The United States had the highest number of total downloads (~1.9 million downloads, 12 apps), followed by India (~1.4 million downloads, 13 apps) and the Philippines (~1.25 million downloads, 4 apps).

These data are not intended to quantify the penetration of healthbots globally, but are presented to highlight the broad global reach of such interventions. Another limitation stems from the fact that in-app purchases were not assessed; therefore, this review highlights features and functionality only of apps that are free to use. Lastly, our review is limited by the limitations in reporting on aspects of security, privacy and exact utilization of ML. While our research team assessed the NLP system design for each app by downloading and engaging with the bots, it is possible that certain aspects of the NLP system design were misclassified. Research on the use of chatbots in public health service provision is at an early stage. Although preliminary results do indicate positive effects in a number of application domains, reported findings are for the most part mixed.

Conversational chatbots are built to be contextual tools that respond based on the user’s intent. However, there are different levels of maturity to a conversational chatbot – not all of them offer the same depth of conversation. Neither does she miss a dose of the prescribed antibiotic – a healthcare chatbot app brings her up to speed on those details. If you are interested in knowing how chatbots work, read our articles on voice recognition applications and natural language processing.

In addition, studies will need to be conducted to validate the effectiveness of chatbots in streamlining workflow for different health care settings. Nonetheless, chatbots hold great potential to complement telemedicine by streamlining medical administration and autonomizing patient encounters. In conclusion, healthcare chatbots have emerged as a valuable tool in the healthcare industry, revolutionizing the way patients engage with https://chat.openai.com/ healthcare providers. With psychiatric disorders affecting at least 35% of patients with cancer, comprehensive cancer care now includes psychosocial support to reduce distress and foster a better quality of life [80]. 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].