Unlocking Efficiency: The Impact of Chatbot in Healthcare

The success of the solution made it operational in 5+ hospital chains in the US, along with a 60% growth in the real-time response rate of nurses. Additionally, this makes it convenient for doctors to pre-authorize billing payments and other requests from patients or healthcare authorities because it allows them quick access to patient information and questions. Large-scale healthcare data, including disease symptoms, diagnoses, indicators, and potential therapies, are used to train chatbot algorithms. Chatbots for healthcare are regularly trained using public datasets, such as Wisconsin Breast Cancer Diagnosis and COVIDx for COVID-19 diagnosis (WBCD). Machine learning, a subset of AI, can analyze large volumes of healthcare data and learn from it to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed.

AI, particularly Machine Learning, fundamentally learns patterns from the data they are trained on Goodfellow et al. (17). If the training data lacks diversity or contains inherent bias, the resultant chatbot models may mirror these biases (18). Such a scenario can potentially amplify healthcare disparities, as it may lead to certain demographics being underserved or wrongly diagnosed (19).

They have become versatile tools, contributing to various facets of healthcare communication and delivery. Chatbots embedded in healthcare websites and mobile apps offer users real-time access to medical information, assisting in self-diagnosis and health education (5). Acropolium provides healthcare bot development services for telemedicine, mental health support, or insurance processing. Skilled in mHealth app building, our engineers can utilize pre-designed building blocks or create custom medical chatbots from the ground up.

Additionally, chatbots can be programmed to communicate with CRM systems to assist medical staff in keeping track of patient visits and follow-up appointments while keeping the data readily available for future use. AI and chatbots can enhance healthcare by providing 24/7 support, reducing wait times, and automating routine tasks, allowing healthcare professionals to focus on more complex patient issues. They can also help in monitoring patient’s health, predicting possible complications, and providing personalized treatment plans. In the context of remote patient monitoring, AI-driven chatbots excel at processing and interpreting the wealth of data garnered from wearable devices and smart home systems.

Hence, it’s very likely to persist and prosper in the future of the healthcare industry. The idea of a digital personal assistant is tempting, but a healthcare chatbot goes a mile beyond that. From patient care to intelligent use of finances, its benefits are wide-ranging and make it a top priority in the Healthcare industry. When patients come across a long wait period, they often cancel or even change their healthcare provider permanently. The use of chatbots in healthcare has proven to be a fantastic solution to the problem. Visitors to a website or app can quickly access a chatbot by using a message interface.

Mental health research has a continued interest over time, with COVID-19–related research showing strong recent interest as expected. Due to the small numbers of papers, percentages must be interpreted with caution and only indicate the presence of research in the area rather than an accurate distribution of research. 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. Explainable AI (XAI) emerges as a pivotal approach to unravel the intricacies of AI models, enhancing not only their performance but also furnishing users with insights into the reasoning behind their outputs (26). Techniques such as LIME (Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations) (27) and SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) (28) have played a crucial role in illuminating the decision-making processes, thereby rendering the “black box” more interpretable.

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. It also increases revenue as the reduction in the consultation periods and hospital waiting lines leads healthcare institutions to take in and manage more patients. Furthermore, if there was a long wait time to connect with an agent, 62% of consumers feel more at ease when a chatbot handles their queries, according to Tidio. As we’ll read further, a healthcare chatbot might seem like a simple addition, but it can substantially impact and benefit many sectors of your institution. Healthcare customer service chatbots can increase corporate productivity without adding any additional costs or staff. For patients with depression, PTSD, and anxiety, chatbots are trained to give cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and they may even teach autistic patients how to become more social and how to succeed in job interviews.

Provide mental health support

Conversational AI is able to understand your symptoms and provide consolation and comfort to help you feel heard whenever you disclose any medical conditions you are struggling with. Intelligent conversational interfaces address this issue by utilizing NLP to offer helpful replies to all questions without requiring the patient to look elsewhere. Furthermore, conversational AI may match the proper answer to a question even if its pose differs significantly across users and does not correspond with the precise terminology on-site.

Patients can easily book appointments, receive reminders, and even reschedule appointments through chatbot interactions (6). This convenience not only benefits patients but also reduces the administrative workload on healthcare providers. They can handle a large volume of interactions simultaneously, chatbot in healthcare ensuring that all patients receive timely assistance. This capability is crucial during health crises or peak times when healthcare systems are under immense pressure. The ability to scale up rapidly allows healthcare providers to maintain quality care even under challenging circumstances.

The good news is that most customers prefer self-service over speaking to someone, which is good news for personnel-strapped healthcare institutions. Conversational AI, on the other hand, uses natural language processing (NLP) to comprehend the context and “parse” human language in order to deliver adaptable responses. While the phrases chatbot, virtual assistant, and conversational AI are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not all made equal. 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.

While AI chatbots can provide preliminary diagnoses based on symptoms, rare or complex conditions often require a deep understanding of the patient’s medical history and a comprehensive assessment by a medical professional. With that being said, we could end up seeing AI chatbots helping with diagnosing illnesses or prescribing medication. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. We would first have to master how to ethically train chatbots to interact with patients about sensitive information and provide the best possible medical services without human intervention. In general, people have grown accustomed to using chatbots for a variety of reasons, including chatting with businesses.

As they interact with patients, they collect valuable health data, which can be analyzed to identify trends, optimize treatment plans, and even predict health risks. This continuous collection and analysis of data ensure that healthcare providers stay informed and make evidence-based decisions, leading to better patient care and outcomes. In the context of patient engagement, chatbots have emerged as valuable tools for remote monitoring and chronic disease management (7). These chatbots assist patients in tracking vital signs, medication adherence, and symptom reporting, enabling healthcare professionals to intervene proactively when necessary.

As the healthcare industry is a mix of empathy and treatments, a similar balance will have to be created for chatbots to become more successful and accepted in the future. Several healthcare service companies are Chat PG converting FAQs by adding an interactive healthcare chatbot to answer consumers’ general questions. In order to contact a doctor for serious difficulties, patients might use chatbots in the healthcare industry.

Their capability to continuously track health status and promptly respond to critical situations will be a game-changer, especially for patients managing chronic illnesses or those in need of constant care. By automating all of a medical representative’s routine and lower-level responsibilities, chatbots in the healthcare industry are extremely time-saving for professionals. They gather and store patient data, ensure its encryption, enable patient monitoring, offer a variety of informative support, and guarantee larger-scale medical help. 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].

They can interact with the bot if they have more questions like their dosage, if they need a follow-up appointment, or if they have been experiencing any side effects that should be addressed. An AI chatbot can quickly help patients find the nearest clinic, pharmacy, or healthcare center based on their particular needs. 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. Integrated into the hospital’s system, the new conversational AI virtual assistant allows the medical staff to access it at any time, in both English or Spanish versions.

These AI-driven platforms have become essential tools in the digital healthcare ecosystem, enabling patients to access a range of healthcare services online from the comfort of their homes. A healthcare chatbot is a sophisticated blend of artificial intelligence and healthcare expertise designed to transform patient care and administrative tasks. At its core, a healthcare chatbot is an AI-powered software application that interacts with users in real-time, either through text or voice communication.

In this respect, the synthesis between population-based prevention and clinical care at an individual level [15] becomes particularly relevant. 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. For instance, DeepMind Health, a pioneering initiative backed by Google, has introduced Streams, a mobile tool infused with AI capabilities, including chatbots. Streams represents a departure from traditional patient management systems, harnessing advanced machine learning algorithms to enable swift evaluation of patient results. This immediacy empowers healthcare providers to promptly identify patients at elevated risk, facilitating timely interventions that can be pivotal in determining patient outcomes. While advancements in AI and machine learning could lead to more sophisticated chatbots, their potential to entirely replace medical professionals remains remote.

The solution provides information about insurance coverage, benefits, and claims information, allowing users to track and handle their health insurance-related needs conveniently. Complex conversational bots use a subclass of machine learning (ML) algorithms we’ve mentioned before — NLP. Stay on this page to learn what are chatbots in healthcare, how they work, and what it takes to create a medical chatbot. With AI technology, chatbots can answer questions much faster – and, in some cases, better – than a human assistant would be able to. Chatbots can also be programmed to recognize when a patient needs assistance the most, such as in the case of an emergency or during a medical crisis when someone needs to see a doctor right away.

The instrumental role of artificial intelligence becomes evident in the augmentation of telemedicine and remote patient monitoring through chatbot integration. AI-driven chatbots bring personalization, predictive capabilities, and proactive healthcare to the forefront https://chat.openai.com/ of these digital health strategies. This type of chatbot app provides users with advice and information support, taking the form of pop-ups. Informative chatbots offer the least intrusive approach, gently easing the patient into the system of medical knowledge.

Recent reviews have focused on the use of chatbots during the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of conversational agents in health care more generally. This paper complements this research and addresses a gap in the literature by assessing the breadth and scope of research evidence for the use of chatbots across the domain of public health. If you are considering chatbots and automation as part of your innovation plan, take time to put together a solid strategy and roadmap. 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.

ChatBot guarantees the highest standards of privacy and security to help you build and maintain patients’ trust. Patients who look for answers with unreliable online resources may draw the wrong conclusions. Create a rich conversational experience with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. DRUID is an Enterprise conversational AI platform, with a proprietary NLP engine, powerful API and RPA connectors, and full on-premise, cloud, or hybrid deployments. Get a glimpse into the art of chatbot conversation design, with 4 unique storylines to choose from. The doctors can then use all this information to analyze the patient and make accurate reports.

Provides Information Instantly

Moreover, the rapidly evolving nature of AI chatbot technology and the lack of standardization in AI chatbot applications further complicate the process of regulatory assessment and oversight (31). While efforts are underway to adapt regulatory frameworks to the unique challenges posed by AI chatbots, this remains an area of ongoing complexity and challenge. In the realm of AI-driven communication, a fundamental challenge revolves around elucidating the models’ decision-making processes, a challenge often denoted as the “black box” problem (25). The complex nature of these systems frequently shrouds the rationale behind their decisions, presenting a substantial barrier to cultivating trust in their application. As AI chatbots increasingly permeate healthcare, they bring to light critical concerns about algorithmic bias and fairness (16).

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. Patients appreciate that using a healthcare chatbot saves time and money, as they don’t have to commute all the way to the doctor’s clinic or the hospital. A chatbot can offer a safe space to patients and interact in a positive, unbiased language in mental health cases. Mental health chatbots like Woebot, Wysa, and Youper are trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which helps to treat problems by transforming the way patients think and behave. The app made the entire communication process with the patients efficient wherein the hospital admin could keep the complete record of the time taken by staff to complete a patient’s request.

Launching an informative campaign can help raise awareness of illnesses and how to treat certain diseases. Before flu season, launch a campaign to help patients prevent colds and flu, send out campaigns on heart attacks in women, strokes, or how to check for breast lumps. These campaigns can be sent to relevant audiences that will find them useful and can help patients become more aware and proactive about their health.

Physicians and nurses provide comfort, reassurance, and empathy during what can be stressful and vulnerable times for patients [6]. This doctor-patient relationship, built on trust, rapport, and understanding, is not something that can be automated or substituted with AI chatbots. Additionally, while chatbots can provide general health information and manage routine tasks, their current capabilities do not extend to answering complex medical queries. These queries often require deep medical knowledge, critical thinking, and years of clinical experience that chatbots do not possess at this point in time [7].

• The patient may also be able to enter information about their symptoms in a mobile app.
• Get a glimpse into the art of chatbot conversation design, with 4 unique storylines to choose from.
• Woebot is among the best examples of chatbots in healthcare in the context of a mental health support solution.
• This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

Embracing this technology means stepping into a future where healthcare is more accessible, personalized, and efficient. The journey with healthcare chatbots is just beginning, and the possibilities are as vast as they are promising. 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. 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.

A healthcare chatbot can respond instantly to every general query a patient has by acting as a one-stop shop. Therefore, a healthcare chatbot can offer patients an easy way to obtain pertinent information, whether they wish to verify their current coverage, file for claims, or track the status of a claim. The chatbots can use the information and assist the patients in identifying the illness responsible for their symptoms based on the pre-fetched inputs. The patient can decide what level of therapies and medications are required using an interactive bot and the data it provides. Now that you understand the advantages of chatbots for healthcare, it’s time to look at the various healthcare chatbot use cases. As more and more businesses recognize the benefits of chatbots to automate their systems, the adoption rate will keep increasing.

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. Woebot is among the best examples of chatbots in healthcare in the context of a mental health support solution. Trained in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), it helps users through simple conversations. Wysa AI Coach also employs evidence-based techniques like CBT, DBT, meditation, breathing, yoga, motivational interviewing, and micro-actions to help patients build mental resilience skills.

One of the most often performed tasks in the healthcare sector is scheduling appointments. However, many patients find it challenging to use an application for appointment scheduling due to reasons like slow applications, multilevel information requirements, and so on. Patients are able to receive the required information as and when they need it and have a better healthcare experience with the help of a medical chatbot. Conversational AI in healthcare communication channels must be carefully selected for successful execution. Ideal channels are ones that patients easily access and integrate seamlessly with existing systems. Voice assistants, bots, and messaging platforms are some of the most often used choices for meeting the demands of various patients.

That’s why they’re often the chatbot of choice for mental health support or addiction rehabilitation services. A big concern for healthcare professionals and patients alike is the ability to provide and receive “humanized” care from a chatbot. Fortunately, with the advancements in AI, healthcare chatbots are quickly becoming more sophisticated, with an impressive capacity to understand patients’ needs, offering them the right information and help they are looking for. Chatbots are designed to assist patients and avoid issues that may arise during normal business hours, such as waiting on hold for a long time or scheduling appointments that don’t fit into their busy schedules. With 24/7 accessibility, patients have instant access to medical assistance whenever they need it.

These innovations hold great promise for expanding healthcare access, enhancing patient outcomes, and streamlining healthcare systems. By enabling healthcare services to transcend geographical barriers, chatbots empower patients with unparalleled access to care while relieving the strain on overburdened healthcare facilities (8). The trajectory of AI integration in healthcare unmistakably moves towards more streamlined, efficient, and patient-centric modalities, with chatbots at the forefront of this transformation. These AI-driven chatbots serve as virtual assistants to healthcare providers, offering real-time information, decision support, and facilitating seamless communication with patients. Appointment scheduling and management represent another vital area where chatbots streamline processes.

Chatbots are made on AI technology and are programmed to access vast healthcare data to run diagnostics and check patients’ symptoms. It can provide reliable and up-to-date information to patients as notifications or stories. Healthcare chatbots enable you to turn all these ideas into a reality by acting as AI-enabled digital assistants. It revolutionizes the quality of patient experience by attending to your patient’s needs instantly.

This efficient sorting helps in managing patient flow, especially in busy clinics and hospitals, ensuring that critical cases get timely attention and resources are optimally utilized. For instance, chatbots can engage patients in their treatment plans, provide educational content, and encourage lifestyle changes, leading to better health outcomes. This interactive model fosters a deeper connection between patients and healthcare services, making patients feel more involved and valued. Patients suffering from mental health issues can seek a haven in healthcare chatbots like Woebot that converse in a cognitive behavioral therapy-trained manner. According to an MGMA Stat poll, about 49% of medical groups said that the rates of ‘no-shows‘ soared since 2021.

Deliver instant healthcare services with the usefulness your patients expect

Within a mere five days of its launch, ChatGPT amassed an impressive one million users, and its user base expanded to 100 million users in just two months [4]. A study conducted six months ago on the use of AI chatbots among healthcare workers found that nearly 20 percent of them utilized ChatGPT [5]. This percentage could be even higher now, given the increasing reliance on AI chatbots in healthcare. In fact, they are sure to take over as a key tool in helping healthcare centers and pharmacies streamline processes and alleviate the workload on staff. Instead of waiting on hold for a healthcare call center and waiting even longer for an email to come through with their records, train your AI chatbot to manage this kind of query.

Notably, chatbots like Woebot have emerged as valuable tools in the realm of mental health, engaging users in meaningful conversations and delivering cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based interventions, as demonstrated by Alm and Nkomo (4). This progression underscores the transformative potential of chatbots, including modern iterations like ChatGPT, to transcend their initial role of providing information and actively participate in patient care. As these AI-driven conversational agents continue to evolve, their capacity to positively influence patient behavior and lifestyle choices becomes increasingly evident, reshaping the landscape of healthcare delivery and patient well-being. As we navigate the evolving landscape of healthcare, the integration of AI-driven chatbots marks a significant leap forward. These digital assistants are not just tools; they represent a new paradigm in patient care and healthcare management.

They provide preliminary assessments, answer general health queries, and facilitate virtual consultations. This support is especially important in remote areas or for patients who have difficulty accessing traditional healthcare services, making healthcare more inclusive and accessible. Chatbot becomes a vital point of communication and information gathering at unforeseeable times like a pandemic as it limits human interaction while still retaining patient engagement.

While AI chatbots have demonstrated significant potential in managing routine tasks, processing vast amounts of data, and aiding in patient education, they still lack the empathy, intuition, and experience intrinsic to human healthcare providers. Furthermore, the deployment of AI in medicine brings forth ethical and legal considerations that require robust regulatory measures. As we move towards the future, the editorial underscores the importance of a collaborative model, wherein AI chatbots and medical professionals work together to optimize patient outcomes. Despite the potential for AI advancements, the likelihood of chatbots completely replacing medical professionals remains low, as the complexity of healthcare necessitates human involvement. The ultimate aim should be to use technology like AI chatbots to enhance patient care and outcomes, not to replace the irreplaceable human elements of healthcare.

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). The challenge of explainability in AI-powered communication intertwines with establishing trust, amplified in dynamic chatbot interactions. Advances in XAI methodologies, ethical frameworks, and interpretable models represent indispensable strides in demystifying the “black box” within chatbot systems. Ongoing efforts are paramount to instill confidence in AI-driven communication, especially involving chatbots.

AI chatbots in healthcare are used for various purposes, including symptom assessment, patient triage, health education, medication management, and supporting telehealth services. Chatbots assist doctors by automating routine tasks, such as appointment scheduling and patient inquiries, freeing up their time for more complex medical cases. They also provide doctors with quick access to patient data and history, enabling more informed and efficient decision-making.

In many cases, these self-service tools are also a more personal way of interacting with healthcare services than browsing a website or communicating with an outsourced call center. In fact, according to Salesforce, 86% of customers would rather get answers from a chatbot than fill out a website form. AI chatbots have been increasingly integrated into the healthcare system to streamline processes and improve patient care. While they can perform several tasks, there are limitations to their abilities, and they cannot replace human medical professionals in complex scenarios. Here, we discuss specific examples of tasks that AI chatbots can undertake and scenarios where human medical professionals are still required.

Prescription refill, medication, and vaccination reminders

Imagine how many more patients you can connect with if you save time and effort by automating responses to repetitive questions of patients and basic activities like appointment scheduling or providing health facts. The gathering of patient information is one of the main applications of healthcare chatbots. By using healthcare chatbots, simple inquiries like the patient’s name, address, phone number, symptoms, current doctor, and insurance information can be utilized to gather information. By probing users, medical chatbots gather data that is used to tailor the patient’s overall experience and enhance business processes in the future. While AI and chatbots have significantly improved in terms of accuracy, they are not yet at a point where they can replace human healthcare professionals.

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 the light of the huge growth in the deployment of chatbots to support public health provision, there is pressing need for research to help guide their strategic development and application [13]. We examined the evidence for the development and use of chatbots in public health to assess the current state of the field, the application domains in which chatbot uptake is the most prolific, and the ways in which chatbots are being evaluated. Reviewing current evidence, we identified some of the gaps in current knowledge and possible next steps for the development and use of chatbots for public health provision. Integrating AI into healthcare presents various ethical and legal challenges, including questions of accountability in cases of AI decision-making errors.

Acting as 24/7 virtual assistants, healthcare chatbots efficiently respond to patient inquiries. This immediate interaction is crucial, especially for answering general health queries or providing information about hospital services. A notable example is an AI chatbot, which offers reliable answers to common health questions, helping patients to make informed decisions about their health and treatment options. The introduction of AI-driven healthcare chatbots marks a transformative era in the rapidly evolving world of healthcare technology. This article delves into the multifaceted role of healthcare chatbots, exploring their functionality, future scope, and the numerous benefits they offer to the healthcare sector. We will examine various use cases, including patient engagement, triage, data analysis, and telehealth support.

So, how do healthcare centers and pharmacies incorporate AI chatbots without jeopardizing patient information and care? In this blog we’ll walk you through healthcare use cases you can start implementing with an AI chatbot without risking your reputation. Speed up time to resolution and automate patient interactions with 14 AI use case examples for the healthcare industry. Let them use the time they save to connect with more patients and deliver better medical care. One of the largest children’s hospitals in the US embarks on a digital transformation journey with DRUID’s conversational AI technology. The hospital implementing an automatic process ensuring COVID-19 checks are made without errors and with as little disruption and hassle for staff.

Despite the saturation of the market with a variety of chatbots in healthcare, we might still face resistance to trying out more complex use cases. It’s partially due to the fact that conversational AI in healthcare is still in its early stages and has a long way to go. More sophisticated chatbot medical assistant solutions will appear as technology for natural language comprehension, and artificial intelligence will be better.

Reaching beyond the needs of the patients, hospital staff can also benefit from chatbots. A chatbot can be used for internal record- keeping of hospital equipment like beds, oxygen cylinders, wheelchairs, etc. Whenever team members need to check the availability or the status of equipment, they can simply ask the bot.

Powerful AI chatbot marketing software helps you improve customer experiences and boost lead generation with fast, personalized customer support. Healthcare chatbots significantly cut unnecessary spending by allowing patients to perform minor treatments or procedures without visiting the doctor. Appinventiv is an esteemed AI app development company that understands what goes behind the development of an innovative digital solution and how worrisome the implementation process can be. Our in-house team of trained and experienced developers specializes in AI app development and customizes solutions for you as per your business requirements.

From booking appointments to monitoring conditions, conversational AI has multiple uses that improve the healthcare experience for both patients and clinicians. In this article, let’s look at the top 10 use cases of conversational AI in healthcare and considerations for effective implementation. Initially, chatbots served rudimentary roles, primarily providing informational support and facilitating tasks like appointment scheduling. 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). During COVID, chatbots aided in patient triage by guiding them to useful information, directing them about how to receive help, and assisting them to find vaccination locations.

A symptom checker bot, such as Conversa, can be the first line of contact between the patient and a hospital. The platform automates care along the way by helping to identify high-risk patients and placing them in touch with a healthcare provider via phone call, telehealth, e-visit, or in-person appointment. Chatbots in healthcare contribute to significant cost savings by automating routine tasks and providing initial consultations. This automation reduces the need for staff to handle basic inquiries and administrative duties, allowing them to focus on more complex and critical tasks. In addition, by handling initial patient interactions, chatbots can reduce the number of unnecessary in-person visits, further saving costs.