How Chatbots Will Shape the Future of Healthcare
If most of us are comfortable to ask Siri about the weather or give instructions to Alexa to dim the lights, would we have the same openness to talk to a medical chatbot? Where would you draw the limit for taking a bot’s advice and how comfortable would you be following healthcare instructions from an algorithm, even if the initial set-up was approved by general practitioners?
The chatbot industry is rapidly growing while promising to cost cuts, but since AI is still in its infancy, some fear that this approach is filled with risks and it is safer to let bots handle only non-vital tasks. Yet, for patients living in remote areas with limited access to healthcare facilities, these tech tools could make a notable difference in the quality of their lives.
AI-Powered Medical Assistants
The tradition of ELIZA, the first bot that mimicked a Rogerian therapist, is proudly continued by modern-day conversational interfaces. Some help you book appointments, others remind you to take your pills or assist you in refilling your prescriptions. Here are a few examples of what they can do:
- Florence — this chatbot nurse tells you to take your medicine, gives you instructions if you forgot to take a pill, monitors your health (and periods for women) and can help you find specialists and book appointments in your area.
- Your. MD — it replaces the assistant of a GP, asks about symptoms and puts enough questions approved by health professionals to identify a condition probabilistically then sets up appointments, referring you to physicians.
- Safedrugbot — this messaging app helps doctors take notice of possible side effects of drugs during breastfeeding and helps to keep mothers safe.
- Babylon Health — another conversational healthcare assistant with the feature of booking a doctor.
- SimSensei — still in its experimental phase, it uses voice and face recognition to mimic a therapist, also interacting with the patient at deeper levels.
Best Uses for Healthcare Chatbots
The chatbots previously mentioned are just a handful of examples. The applications are endless, but for now, due to limited capabilities of AI, it is best to restrict use to those actions which are safe to be performed by an entity that is still learning. Imagine your healthcare chatbot as an intelligent, good-natured and willing to learn intern.
Currently, the safest ways to use medical chatbots include: scheduling doctor appointments based on the severity of the symptoms, monitoring the health status and notifying a human nurse immediately if the parameters are out of control, helping homecare assistants stay informed about patients’ evolution. This is, in fact, replacing the work of customer service representatives.
These intelligent assistants can also take care of billing, inventory, and insurance claims management, as the healthcare software development company Itransition describes.
Other functionalities that are still under testing include chronical illness management like that of Type 2 Diabetes and mental health management. These bots are still experimental and under no circumstances should they be used as a replacement of proper medical care. Yet, they can offer comfort and a bit of reassurance until the doctor can see you.
How do They Work?
The functioning of chatbots is based on at least four different structures. The first is natural language processing to make sense of the user’s demands followed by knowledge management to provide an answer. Deep learning helps the chatbot improve its response to each interaction. Sentiment analysis detects the user’s frustration and transfers them to a human.
Depending on the sophistication degree of the chatbot, it will try to anticipate the interaction and provide the user with appropriate choices, or just wait for new commands.
Regulating the bots
If chatbots expect to become part of the medical system, they must follow the same rules as any other software pieces and pass privacy and security check-ups. In the US, they must be HIPAA compliant to ensure the patient’s personal information is received and stored in a way that is not directly exposed to hackers.
Such regulations were designed for static software, but a chatbot is much more than that, as it can learn and make new connections thanks to AI. Therefore, knowledge base management rules should be designed to ensure new information derived from the interaction is still compliant with ethical medical practices.
A bot should only be allowed on the market after its initial data has been fully verified by competent medical personnel. Data retrieved from existing drug prospects, FAQ sections, and medical manuals is a good starting point, but to be up to date, the knowledge available to the bot should also include the latest research.
Doctor-chatbot Relationship
Will chatbots replace doctors and nurses one day? We have already seen it happening in other areas like engineering, manufacturing, and mining. Given the fact that everyone is unique and some medical conditions are atypical, the simple answer is no.
Yet, the chatbot can become a trustworthy assistant, like an attentive and caring nurse, which provides registration services, entertains the patient until the doctor can see them and even gives simple, reassuring advice.
A twenty-first-century medical practice can rely on a chatbot to capture leads and provide 24/7 support to existing patients, answering their simple, repetitive questions using a pre-designed answers. It will not offer a diagnosis, but it can remind you to take your drugs or help you check for an unusual side effect in the middle of the night and schedule a visit first thing in the morning.
Not only patients but doctors too can enjoy the benefits of having a chatbot by their side. It can easily replace databases with medicine interactions and dosage calculators. Furthermore, such uses can make the database richer and the chatbot smarter.
A Healthcare Revolution?
Chatbots are expected to be a revolution in different verticals, including insurance, banking, and retail. No doubt, the medical sector can benefit from the same cost savings related to customer care, but extra attention should be given to the functionalities that are automated. A simple mistake in this area can be life-threatening. Therefore, it is best to keep giving them simple tasks, to save precious time for the doctors and to ensure accuracy of the billing.
