How to Use AI Chatbots for Healthcare- 17 Best Practices

This unique comparison serves to highlight the advanced capabilities of LLMs such as ChatGPT in enhancing the delivery and accuracy of remote health services [59,75]. Nonetheless, a significant challenge persists in guaranteeing the contextual relevance and appropriateness of chatbot responses, Chat GPT particularly in intricate medical scenarios [59,60]. In addition, the personalization of health care interactions and the precision of information provided by these AI-driven systems are critical areas necessitating extensive future research and rigorous evaluation of their outputs [59,60,299].

This gap highlights the need for more research focused on these regions, considering their unique digital infrastructure and resource challenges, to democratize health technology and address chronic conditions and health literacy [20, ]. The limitations extend to challenges in empathy and personal connection, which refer to the difficulties chatbots face in simulating human conversations and establishing rapport with users. This is a critical aspect in health care settings where patient trust and comfort are paramount, as highlighted in 17 (53%) of the 32 studies. Comprising 15 (9.3%) of the 161 studies, this category involved the use of chatbots for educational purposes.

Chatbots can ask simple questions like a patient’s name, contact, address, symptoms, insurance information, and current doctor. All this information is extracted from the chatbots and saved in the institute’s medical record-keeping system for further use. Of course, no algorithm can compare to the experience of a doctor that’s earned in the field or the level of care a trained nurse can provide. However, chatbot solutions for the healthcare industry can effectively complement the work of medical professionals, saving time and adding value where it really counts.

Use Cases of Healthcare Chatbots: A Detailed Guide 2024

And some hospitals have even begun using them to provide emotional support for patients struggling after a traumatic event or illness diagnosis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC’s chatbot played a crucial role by helping users assess their symptoms remotely and directing them to nearby testing facilities, thereby maintaining essential health services during a public health crisis. Chatbots help patients and visitors navigate large medical facilities, use of chatbots in healthcare providing real-time directions to departments, specialists, or amenities, which enhances the visitor experience and operational efficiency. According to a study by Juniper Research, chatbots will be responsible for cost savings of over $3.7 billion by 2023 for the healthcare industry, showcasing their efficiency and economic benefit. Continuous improvement in design makes chatbots more reliable and guarantees a wide range of services.

Health care professionals (7/15, 47%) focused on training and professional development with this group. This theme refers to all types of administrative work carried out by the chatbots, grouped within 2 categories—health-related administrative tasks and research purposes—with 9 (5.6%) of the 161 studies contributing to this theme. The best way to avoid this problem is to verify your source before using the chatbot’s information.

5, over the past five years, the trend is to create chatbots using more and more frameworks and online platforms, such as Telegram, Facebook, etc., instead of using AIML and ad-hoc NLP-based algorithms. This is at the expense of developing accessible and inclusive interfaces due to the limited functionality offered by frameworks and platforms that are readily available online. As a Business Analyst with 4+ years of experience at Acropolium, I have served as a vital link between our software development team and clients. With a comprehensive understanding of IT processes, I am able to identify and effectively address the diverse needs of firms and industries. Only limited by network connection and server performance, bots respond to requests instantaneously.

Financial Accounting Software Development — Cost, Features and Security Measures

A chatbot can serve many more purposes than simply providing information and answering questions. Below, we’ll look at the most widespread chatbot types and their main areas of operation. Train your chatbot to be conversational and collect feedback in a casual and stress-free way.

One of the most prevalent uses of chatbots in healthcare is to book and schedule appointments. Another advantage is that the chatbot has already collected all required data and symptoms before the patient’s visit. Equipping doctors to go through their appointments quicker and more efficiently. Not only does this help health practitioners, but it also alerts patients in case of serious medical conditions.

While many patients appreciate the help of a human assistant, many others prefer to hold their information private. Chatbots are non-human and non-judgmental, allowing patients to feel more comfortable sharing sensitive medical details. This is one of the core factors of the healthcare system, as it’s the duty of the institutions from any niche to make their patients feel secure and comfortable when sharing their data. A chatbot helps in providing accurate information about COVID-19 in different languages. And, AI-driven chatbots help to make the screening process fast and efficient. By being aware of these possible risks, medical experts and patients can reap the maximum benefits of this technology.

• This allows them to take on even more complex responsibilities, such as recognizing symptoms and even making diagnoses.
• Before answering, the bot compares the entered text with pre-programmed responses and displays it to the user if it finds a match; otherwise, it shares a generic fallback answer.
• Integrating a chatbot with hospital systems enhances its capabilities, allowing it to showcase available expertise and corresponding doctors through a user-friendly carousel for convenient appointment booking.
• This proactive approach enables patients to share detailed feedback, which is especially beneficial when introducing new doctors or seeking improvement suggestions.
• Patients can also get immediate emotional support and guidance using a virtual counselor.

That app allows users undergoing prostate cancer treatment to track and optimize their physical and mental health by storing and managing their medical records in the so-called health passport. The goals you set now will establish the very essence of your new product and the technology on which your artificial intelligence healthcare chatbot system or project will be based. There are some well-known chatbots in healthcare like Babylon Health, Ada Health, YourMd, Buoy Health, CancerChatbot, Safedrugbot, Safedrugbot, etc. There is lots of room for enhancement in the healthcare industry when it comes to AI and other tech solutions.

The introduction of chatbots has significantly improved healthcare, especially in providing patients with the information they seek. This was particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic when the World Health Organization (WHO) deployed a COVID-19 virtual assistant through WhatsApp. By clearly outlining the chatbot’s capabilities and limitations, healthcare institutions build trust with patients.

Our review underscores the transformative roles of chatbots in health care, particularly in delivering remote health services and enhancing patient support, care management, and mental health support. Consistent with previous literature [ ], our findings affirm chatbots’ potential to improve health care accessibility and patient management. The administrative efficiency of chatbots, noted in our review, resonates with previous findings [23,35,255,258] on the importance of resource optimization in health care settings. A healthcare chatbot is a virtual customer service that is used by healthcare departments to plan and manage their operations like inquiries and offering a convenient way for users to get the information they are looking for. With the help of healthcare chatbots, patients can get information like doctors available in the hospital for specific diseases, appointments, and more.

Some people may feel uncomfortable talking to an automated system, especially when it comes to sensitive health matters. Some people might not find them as trustworthy as a real person who can provide personalized advice and answer questions in real time. Healthcare chatbots offer more efficient patient self-service than traditional methods such as telephone call centers or websites. It’s where users must navigate multiple pages before reaching a live agent who may need to learn more about the specific issue before helping them. In this article, you can read through the pros and cons of healthcare chatbots to provide a balanced perspective on how they can be used in practice today.

To provide a comprehensive overview of the current research on health-related chatbots, we will include papers about chatbots designed for various populations, including patients, clinicians, policy makers, or the general population. The eligibility assessment will be performed by 2 authors (VB and VT) who are an AI consultant and a clinician. In the event of disagreements, the 2 authors will discuss in team meetings with the corresponding author (ZN) to reach a consensus. All interventional and observational studies published as journal papers or conference proceedings will be included. To offer a holistic view of the evolving usage of chatbots in health care, we will not set restrictions on the year of publication.

According to Grand View Research, the global healthcare chatbots market size was estimated at USD 787.1M in 2022, and is expected to grow at a  CAGR of 23.9 percent from 2023 to 2030. Sometimes, human memory isn’t that retentive, especially when it comes to sick people. Besides, chatbots can answer related questions concerning drug dosage or side effects the medicine may have. AI-powered conversational chatbots are typical examples of products that disrupt the contemporary healthcare industry and act as an essential element of the comprehensive digitalization drive. Although chatbots are popping up everywhere, there is often confusion about what they do and why it matters. Chatbots collect minimal user data, often limited to necessary medical information, and it is used solely to enhance the user experience and provide personalized assistance.

Element Blue works with leading healthcare providers to deploy chatbots and virtual assistants that assist with medical diagnosis, appointment scheduling, data entry, in-patient and outpatient query address, and automation of patient support. In this arena, chatbots can be used to provide support, guidance, and resources through a conversational interface, a study published in 2023 notes. One of the advantages of healthcare chatbots is they provide real-time assistance. If you have ever used an app for customer service, you know there are often long wait times. In fact, many people get frustrated and hang up before their call is answered. Creating a healthcare chatbot involves several complexities due to the need for compliance with healthcare regulations, sophisticated natural language processing capabilities, and secure handling of sensitive personal health information.

One of the biggest benefits AI chatbots offer in healthcare is around-the-clock availability. They are available to answer queries, schedule appointments, and assist patients 24/7. This round-the-clock availability significantly enhances healthcare service, ensuring patients have access to care or information anytime they need it. These intelligent assistants have also been a boon to healthcare professionals, revolutionizing their work.

That’s where chatbots come in – they offer a more intuitive way for patients to get their questions answered and add a personal touch. Major Challenges around Healthcare include rising costs, overworked staff, and heavy patient footfall with no assistance. But AI chatbots have end-to-end solutions for all these issues with their multichannel integration purpose and quick implementation.

The chatbot can also be trained to offer useful details such as operating hours, contact information, and user reviews to help patients make an informed decision. Rule-based chatbots can be a great tool for easing the workload of front desk staff, providing 24/7 support for general queries, or managing and booking appointments. In most industries it’s quite simple to create and deploy a chatbot, but for healthcare and pharmacies, things can get a little tricky.

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]. No included studies reported direct observation (in the laboratory or in situ; eg, ethnography) or in-depth interviews as evaluation methods. Chatbots were found to have improved medical service provision by reducing screening times [17] and triaging people with COVID-19 symptoms to direct them toward testing if required. These studies clearly indicate that chatbots were an effective tool for coping with the large numbers of people in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, this result suggests that although chatbots can achieve useful scalability properties (handling many cases), accuracy is of active concern, and their deployment needs to be evidence-based [23].

As AI continues to advance, we can anticipate an even more integrated and intuitive healthcare experience, fundamentally changing how we think about patient care and healthcare delivery. Chatbots streamline patient data collection by gathering essential information like medical history, current symptoms, and personal health data. For example, chatbots integrated with electronic health records (EHRs) can update patient profiles in real-time, ensuring that healthcare providers have the latest information for diagnosis and treatment. The evidence cited in most of the included studies either measured the effect of the intervention or surface and self-reported user satisfaction. There was little qualitative experimental evidence that would offer more substantive understanding of human-chatbot interactions, such as from participant observations or in-depth interviews.

Time efficiency

This tool alone would bring major benefits and relief to healthcare centers, especially when it comes to customer support. But when it comes to healthcare communication, there needs to be a human element to the conversation to make the patient feel comfortable and taken care of – which is something a basic rule-based chatbot can’t always offer. 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 rapid growth and adoption of AI chatbots in the healthcare sector is exemplified by ChatGPT.

Although the use of NLP is a new territory in the health domain [47], it is a well-studied area in computer science and HCI. The majority (28/32, 88%) of the studies contained very little description of the technical implementation of the chatbot, which made it difficult to classify the chatbots from this perspective. Most (19/32, 59%) of the included papers included screenshots of the user interface. In such cases, we marked the chatbot as using a combination of input methods (see Figure 5). All the included studies tested textual input chatbots, where the user is asked to type to send a message (free-text input) or select a short phrase from a list (single-choice selection input).

For example, since chatbots interpret and process human-understandable language within the spoken context, they understand the depth of the conversation and realize general user commands or queries. A healthcare chatbot can quickly help patients locate the nearest clinic, pharmacy or healthcare center based on their needs. With the advancements of AI in the healthcare industry, chatbots are able to comprehend users’ needs. The customer experience is improved with the information and assistance they provide. Since they are able to answer the basic questions at the first point of contact, they help users establish trust in the organization and quicken the pace of the care delivery process. You can use chatbots in various healthcare workflows, such as patient registration, medical billing, clerical tasks, and insurance claims.

Chatbots can to provide access to people’s medical dossiers by integrating them with EHR and EMR software. Healthcare facilities shouldn’t leave their customers adrift in the process of treatment. Doctors can improve their illness management by creating message flows for patients to let them keep to a certain diet or do exercises prescribed by the physician.

You’re dealing with sensitive patient information, diagnosis, prescriptions, and medical advice, which can all be detrimental if the chatbot gets something wrong. Healthcare chatbots can locate nearby medical services or where to go for a certain type of care. For example, a person who has a broken bone might not know whether to go to a walk-in clinic or a hospital emergency room. They can also direct patients to the most convenient facility, depending on access to public transport, traffic and other considerations.

Most SMBs and startups partner with an AI development company to reduce risks and accelerate development to produce a market-aligned solution. Prior to getting their X-ray, CT scan, full body check, or other diagnostic done, patients must undergo certain preparations, such as fasting or adhering to a specific diet. Doctors can send reminders several days leading to the appointment to ensure the procedure proceeds smoothly with chatbots. Prescriptive chatbots work similarly to conversational bots, except that they assume the role of a medical advisor. These chatbots are trained to provide professional medical guidance to patients. The medical AI chatbot costs range from $70,000–$250,000 to $300,000–$800,000, depending on the functionality in the first place.

After we’ve looked at the main benefits and types of healthcare chatbots, let’s move on to the most common healthcare chatbot use cases. We will also provide real-life examples to support each use case, so you have a better understanding of how exactly the bots deliver expected results. Also known as informative, these bots are here to answer questions, provide requested information, and guide you through services of a healthcare provider. If such a bot is AI-powered, it can also adapt to a conversation, become proactive instead of reactive, and overall understand the sentiment. But even if the conversational bot does not have an innovative technology in its backpack, it can still be a highly valuable tool for quickly offering the needed information to a user. The healthcare industry is constantly embracing technological advancements, as every new innovation brings significant improvements to patient care and to work processes of medical professionals.

They connect with patients after doctor visits or treatments, provide guidance for at-home care or medication regimens, and even help set reminders for medication or next appointments. By automating routine tasks, reducing unnecessary appointments, and helping in the proactive management of health, AI chatbots help lower healthcare costs, making it more affordable and accessible for everyone. Third, organizations that combat AI chatbot security concerns should ensure solid identity and access management [28]. Organizations should have strict control over who has access to specific data sets and continuously audit how the data are accessed, as it has been the reason behind some data breaches in the past [11].

These technologies not only improve accessibility and streamline processes but also enhance patient engagement by offering 24/7 assistance, demonstrating the significant impact of AI in modernizing healthcare services. For example, the chatbot “Molly” by Sensely uses machine learning to support patients with chronic illnesses by monitoring their condition and providing advice. Similarly, “Babylon Health” offers a chatbot that conducts initial medical consultations based on personal medical history and common medical knowledge. As we have seen, most CAs use machine learning algorithms, to be able to better understand user requests and provide the most appropriate response. Chatbots or conversational agents (CAs) are applications that interact with users via written or spoken natural language simulating a human-like conversation. They accept input as speech, text, or video; in addition, they may receive input from several different sensors.

Rigorous privacy and security protocols are in place to safeguard patient data. These encompass encrypting data during transmission, adhering to HIPAA-compliant app development standards, and enforcing strong access controls on sensitive patient information. The chatbot seamlessly engages with the EHR system to access or modify patient medical records by leveraging the established API connection.

The security concerns for healthcare chatbots aren’t new and have been well-documented in other sectors, like banking, finance, and insurance. Undoubtedly, it is one of the biggest disadvantages of chatbots in healthcare. They are still at an early stage of development, and there are many security concerns that need to be addressed before they can be used more widely. Healthcare chatbots can be programmed to remind patients of upcoming appointments, making them more likely to attend. The ability of healthcare chatbots to provide appointment reminders is one of the reasons why many healthcare organizations are considering adopting them.

Transparency and user control over data are also essential to building trust and ensuring the ethical use of chatbots in healthcare. Chatbots have begun to use more advanced natural language processing, which allows them to understand people’s questions and answer them in more detail and naturally. They have become experts in meeting certain needs, like helping with long-term health conditions, giving support for mental health, or helping people remember to take their medicine.

This provides patients with an easy gateway to find relevant information and helps them avoid repetitive calls to healthcare providers. In addition, healthcare chatbots can also give doctors easy access to patient information and queries, making it convenient for them to pre-authorize billing payments and other requests from patients or healthcare authorities. In 2024, every organization in every sector will implement chatbots due to the increasing demand for adapting patient engagement tactics.

For example, on the first stage, the chatbot only collects data (e.g., a prescription renewal request). As healthcare becomes increasingly complex, patients have more and more questions about their care, from understanding medical bills to managing chronic conditions. The need for a more sophisticated tool to handle these queries led to https://chat.openai.com/ the evolution of chatbots from simple automated responders to query tools that can handle complex patient inquiries. Chatbots can quickly and efficiently handle a high volume of patient queries, addressing routine questions and concerns and freeing up healthcare professionals to focus on complex cases and direct patient interaction.

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 can remind patients about the need for certain vaccinations.

Jelvix’s HIPAA-compliant platform is changing how physical therapists interact with their patients. Our mobile application allows patients to receive videos, messages, and push reminders directly to their phones. The platform’s web version will enable them to shoot videos/photos using a webcam. Thus, responsible doctors monitor the patient’s health status online and give feedback on the correct exercise. Chatbots provide a private, secure and convenient environment to ask questions and get help without fear or judgment.

While the potential benefits of healthcare chatbots are significant, digital entrepreneurs and healthcare leaders must acknowledge and address several challenges to ensure optimal outcomes for healthcare agencies and clients. Many healthcare centers are enhancing their FAQs with interactive chatbots, enabling users to find answers to their questions quickly. This integration will improve user experience and optimize operational efficiency within healthcare facilities. Starting with the least intrusive approach, informative chatbots typically offer users advice and support through pop-ups, making them ideal for mental health or addiction rehabilitation services.

Medication Management and Reminders

The innovative nature of this technology also means a lower entry point and more opportunities for reaching target audiences. Together with other high-tech advancements, chatbots have become a pivotal component of the contemporary digitalization drive dominating the healthcare industry. These AI-powered tools rely on cutting-edge technologies to ease the burden on medical organizations’ customer support teams and increase the level of services they provide to patients. Now that you have a solid understanding of healthcare chatbots and their crucial aspects, it’s time to explore their potential!

Such medical assistants monitor patient health remotely, suggest evidence-based treatment options, and even translate documents. This empowers doctors to dedicate their expertise to complex cases, supporting clinical decision-making. Patients can also get immediate emotional support and guidance using a virtual counselor. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. These bots are particularly beneficial in areas where such services are inaccessible. They engage users in therapeutic conversations, providing coping strategies and mental health education. Mental health chatbots are a cool way for people to get support for their mental well-being.

Studies were included if they used or evaluated chatbots for the purpose of prevention or intervention and for which the evidence showed a demonstrable health impact. Youper monitors patients’ mental states as they chat about their emotional well-being and swiftly starts psychological techniques-based, tailored talks to improve patients’ health. Whether patients want to check their existing coverage, apply, or track the status of an application, the chatbot provides an easy way to find the information they need. Physicians will also easily access patient information and inquiries and conveniently pre-authorized bill payments and other questions from patients or health authorities.

As a matter of fact, out of twenty-one applications analyzed, only four are accessible [15, 20, 17, 13] and only one is designed specifically for people with disabilities [17]. Chatbot solution for healthcare industry is a program or application designed to interact with users, particularly patients, within the context of healthcare services. They can be powered by AI (artificial intelligence) and NLP (natural language processing). They can handle a large volume of interactions simultaneously, ensuring that all patients receive timely assistance. This capability is crucial during health crises or peak times when healthcare systems are under immense pressure.

These applications enable users to access health services remotely in order to schedule appointments [16], access hospital hours and contact doctors or the reception. Future assistants may support more sophisticated multimodal interactions, incorporating voice, video, and image recognition for a more comprehensive understanding of user needs. At the same time, we can expect the development of advanced chatbots that understand context and emotions, leading to better interactions. The integration of predictive analytics can enhance bots’ capabilities to anticipate potential health issues based on historical data and patterns. Acropolium has delivered a range of bespoke solutions and provided consulting services for the medical industry. The insights we’ll share in this post come directly from our experience in healthcare software development and reflect our knowledge of the algorithms commonly used in chatbots.

The world witnessed its first psychotherapist chatbot in 1966 when Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a natural language processing program. It used pattern matching and substitution methodology to give responses, but limited communication abilities led to its downfall. Now that we understand the myriad advantages of incorporating chatbots in the healthcare sector, let us dive into what all kinds of tasks a chatbot can achieve and which chatbot abilities resonate best with your business needs.

• The remaining ones used a variety of different methodologies like data gathering [25, 28, 21] or online interfaces like Google API’s [14].
• A chatbot is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing to understand customer questions and automate responses to them, simulating human conversation [1].
• However, ethical considerations such as data privacy and algorithmic biases must be addressed for responsible AI deployment, crucial for maintaining trust and fairness [73].
• AI chatbots in healthcare are a secret weapon in the battle against high costs.
• Not only can these chatbots manage appointments, send out reminders, and offer around-the-clock support, but they pay close attention to the safety, security, and privacy of their users.

Only 4 studies included chatbots that responded in speech [24,25,37,38]; all the other studies contained chatbots that responded in text. Two-thirds (21/32, 66%) of the chatbots in the included studies were developed on custom-developed platforms on the web [6,16,20-26], for mobile devices [21,27-36], or personal computers [37,38]. A smaller fraction (8/32, 25%) of chatbots were deployed on existing social media platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or Slack [39-44]; using SMS text messaging [42,45]; or the Google Assistant platform [18] (see Figure 4). This result is possibly an artifact of the maturity of the research that has been conducted in mental health on the use of chatbots and the massive surge in the use of chatbots to help combat COVID-19. The graph in Figure 2 thus reflects the maturity of research in the application domains and the presence of research in these domains rather than the quantity of studies that have been conducted. Over the past two years, investors have poured more than $800 million into various companies developing chatbots and other AI-enabled platforms for health diagnostics and care, per Crunchbase data.