Healthcare and Chatbots, you sure?

Many would get skeptical about the mention of Chatbots in reference to the medical sector. And the ones who don’t must have heard of Wysa, Zini, and Florence. But in case you haven’t then no worries! healthcare is, after all, an extremely delicate sector. There is hardly any room for experimentation. So, today in this read we are going to discuss in great detail about the AI Chatbots for healthcare. Have a sneak-peek into this AI + Healthcare world, let’s us understand the word Chatbot precisely.

What is a Chatbot?

AI Chatbots are computer programs that can simulate human conversations in a written or spoken format. It allows us to interact with software as we were interacting with a real being. They can be as simplistic as a rudimentary program that queries with a single-line response or as advanced as a virtual assistant that learns and evolves for delivering a high level of personalization.

Benefits of Chatbot in the healthcare industry

1. Automates patients’ outreach

Chatbots in healthcare offer smart bookings and meeting reminders. It aids your organization by analyzing the patient’s behavior and history to anticipate shortcomings before they occur. It can even be utilized to automate routine tasks such as validating referrals, conducting patient satisfaction surveys, making appointments and follow-up, and paying bills. Healthcare bots can also be used to check relevant information, such as insurance coverage and current symptoms.

2. Prescription drug information

The average patient spends a lot of time researching prescription drugs online. Chatbots made with AI are used by pharmacies around the world to answer frequently asked questions about medicines. The queries are generally based upon drug composition, their interactions, recommended dosages, side effects, brand names, alternatives, etc. They can even be used as inexpensive and unique online tools for pharmacies and manufacturers of websites, applications, and other digital channels.

3. Additional queries 

Not all problems are related to medical symptoms or drug interactions. Patients often have questions about various medical equipment they are supposed to avail of. For instance, they often need to know the location of getting their wheelchair services or the place to buy new oxygen cylinders. Clinics and hospitals can learn from the questions that patients submit to the bot. They can provide this information at the point of care rather than forcing patients to look for them later.

4. Lead generation

Medical Institutions can use chatbots to raise brand awareness by engaging customers in the digital channels they visit often. Chatbots can be availed, for example, to provide symptom questionnaires to people. Bots can then offer personalized information to the prospect based on their responses. Afterward, they invite the person to general care or screening. Educating people, lead generation, and setting up meetings could be done within the same conversation.

5. Billing and registration

Clinics and Hospitals can leverage this bot technology to integrate with inventory, backend billing, and insurance claims management systems. This integration allows healthcare providers in the invoice generation for payments and even allows the patients to interact with your billing department smoothly. Health insurance providers, likewise, deploy these Chatbots to answer common questions related to coverage, claims, and procedures. This, in return, frees the agents to focus on more complicated cases and more productive work.

6. Patient reminders

Patient compliance and medication adherence is a major obstacle for healthcare providers. AI Chatbots can send the patients reminders for their medication and exercises. Also, they can be used to send patients reminders that their prescription needs to be refilled, and they are due for a routine checkup, or some other health-related issues.

7. Helpful in emergency

During life-threatening situations, healthcare bots can raise the alarms automatically. For instance, if a person who has chest pain does not respond to messages within a prescribed period, an emergency call would be made to the concerned authority by the Chatbot. This could prove to be a life-saving hack.

Also Read- AI Healthcare Software Development: Benefits, Features and Development Process

How to build a chatbot for the healthcare sector?

All the innovations have started with an idea. A similar notion applies to the development of chatbots. When stepping into this journey, have the idea, draw a blueprint, and then go for the final design. Afterward, shape your plan with requirements. Once done, you can jump to prototyping and testing of your software.

The whole process is segregated into four steps:

Step 1. Analyze & Research

Research and Analysis is the first step of the development journey. One has to be very clear about the idea behind the bot implementation. This phase gives clarity about what sort of issues the bot is going to tackle. 

You can begin by asking the following questions:

• “Which problem does the bot intend to solve?”
•  “Why are you developing the bot in the first place?”
•  “What is exactly the purpose of investing so much?”

It is important to understand that a bot must solve the end-user problem or optimize the processes of your organization. We would recommend you leverage healthcare technology consulting services from a reputable company like Matellio. Then you will be able to get the experts’ guidance with your research work for this project.

Step 2.  Chatbot’s Personality

It’s essential to give a thought about your users’ personality as it is going to define the persona of your bot as well. The actual nature of bot is defined as the way your users perceive it while interacting with it. A chatbot can be as you wish- formal, serious, witty, professional, adventurous, or merely robotic. There are specific questions that are needed to be asked before kickstarting the development- 

• How does your product is portrayed?
• Is it going to be female or male?
• Would the bot be young or elderly?
• What is going to be the average age of humans, the bot would be interacting with?

You can add the spark of emotions and other such traits in the Chatbot to make it more suitable for living beings. 

Step 3.  Create a Plan

The next step is to develop requirements. One can use a quick help in that. All you have to concentrate on is to analyze the target audience, research their preferences, and jot a blueprint. Step one and two are the foundation for this step. Just bring your whole focus on the bots’ use cases and business goals, and the obstacle is crossed. 

Step 4.  Prototype Development

Now it’s time to get our hands dirty. This means that the time has arrived to execute the well-crafted plans. One can do so in three ways- 

First, by taking the job in your own hands, and start coding (undoubtedly a challenging task)
Second, is by using some chatbot development platform.
Third, and the one we recommend highest is by leveraging a chatbot development team for building your prototype. 
All the options have their beauty. The decision boils down to your time, money, and skills. 

The further stages involve testing, updation, and launches, which are easily executed with an experienced development team.

Final Words

As the healthcare market is continually evolving, and so is the need for technology in this sector. Medical bots help the sites minimize the support calls, and fulfills the need of users. Their development helps the practitioners and other staff members to focus on more important tasks. This lends a helping hand to both the service provider and the patient. 

Do you know anything exciting in this field? If so, feel free to share. Till then, Happy Reading!