AI Chatbots in Healthcare Examples + Development Guide

Conversational chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU), applications of AI that enable machines to understand human language and intent. Healthcare payers and providers, including medical assistants, are also beginning to leverage these chatbot technology in healthcare 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.

Given the current status and challenges of cancer care, chatbots will likely be a key player in this field’s continual improvement. More specifically, they hold promise in addressing the triple aim of health care by improving the quality of care, bettering the health of populations, and reducing the burden or cost of our health care system. Beyond cancer care, there is an increasing number of creative ways in which chatbots could be applicable to health care.

The Development and Use of Chatbots in Public Health: Scoping Review

Soon we will live in a world where conversational partners will be humans or chatbots, and in many cases, we will not know and will not care what our conversational partner will be [27]. However, a biased view of gender is revealed, as most of the chatbots perform tasks that echo historically feminine roles and articulate these features with stereotypical behaviors. Accordingly, general or specialized chatbots automate work that is coded as female, given that they mainly operate in service or assistance related contexts, acting as personal assistants or secretaries [21]. 1 according to Scopus [18], there was a rapid growth of interest in chatbots especially after the year 2016. Many chatbots were developed for industrial solutions while there is a wide range of less famous chatbots relevant to research and their applications [19]. In the wake of stay-at-home orders issued in many countries and the cancellation of elective procedures and consultations, users and healthcare professionals can meet only in a virtual office.

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. Choosing the essential features for your minimum viable product For many entrepreneurs, having a great idea and a solid development team automatically equals the success of a future project. The automatic prescription refill is another great option as the patient does not have to go to a doctor in person and fill in lengthy forms. The bot collects all needed information, sends it to a doctor, and notifies the patient once the refill is ready to be collected. 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.

Health consultation chatbots

These chatbots are more human-like and use machine learning algorithms and deep learning techniques. NLU aims to extract context and meanings from natural language user inputs, which may be unstructured and respond appropriately according to user intention [32]. More specifically, an intent represents a mapping between what a user says and what action should be taken by the chatbot. Actions correspond to the steps the chatbot will take when specific intents are triggered by user inputs and may have parameters for specifying detailed information about it [28].