14 ways chatbots can elevate the healthcare experience
Speed up time to resolution and automate patient interactions with 14 AI use case examples for the healthcare industry.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know AI chatbots are all the rave these days, and for a number of reasons:
74%
of customer choose a chatbot for simple inquiries
90%
of queries are resolved in 10 messages or less
55%
of companies using chatbots get higher quality leads
In most industries it’s quite simple to create and deploy a chatbot, but for healthcare and pharmacies, things can get a little tricky. You’re dealing with sensitive patient information, diagnosis, prescriptions, and medical advice, which can all be detrimental if the chatbot gets something wrong.
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.
What is a healthcare chatbot?
Healthcare chatbots are intelligent assistants used by medical centers and medical professionals to help patients get assistance faster. They can help with FAQs, appointment booking, reminders, and other repetitive questions or queries that often overload medical offices.
Why are healthcare chatbots important for patient experiences?
In general, people have grown accustomed to using chatbots for a variety of reasons, including chatting with businesses. The healthcare industry is no different. In fact, 52% of patients in the USA acquire their healthcare data through chatbots.
But chatbots are only as intelligent as we train them to be, and so “teaching” your chatbot how to interact with patients is critical. Here’s what our Chief Business Officer, Ivan Ostojić had to say about new AI chatbots for healthcare:
Utilizing untested AI technology, in this case, chatbots is risky when trusted to communicate with patients and provide medical advice. There needs to be a specific approval process and clear safeguards in place for the usage of this type of technology to ensure AI chatbots can’t intervene without human supervision.
It is also critical to establish workflows that these types of chatbots are developed to follow where items pertaining to highly sensitive topics are brought to the attention of humans for review and approval before sharing information with a patient.
Ivan Ostojić
Chief Business Officer at Infobip
People want speed, convenience, and reliability from their healthcare providers, and chatbots, when developed well, can help alleviate a lot of the strain healthcare centers and pharmacies experience daily.
What does healthcare messaging look like in 2024?
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Discover healthcare messaging trendsWhat are the benefits of healthcare chatbots?
Fast responses
Reduce costs
Reliability
Anonymity
- Speeding up query resolution: using a chatbot can help healthcare centers resolve simple patient issues much faster, leaving reception open to urgent calls and complicated issues
- Reducing costs: Globally, chatbots are reported to save the healthcare industry up to $3.7 billion by helping healthcare centers automate processes and take over tasks like appointment scheduling from front desk staff
- Ensuring reliability: not all doctors and healthcare providers can be available 24/7 for assistance, using a chatbot opens the opportunity to assist patients at any time of day, creating a better sense of security and reliability to your healthcare center
- Offering anonymity: most patients prefer to keep all their medical information private, that even includes some highly personal questions they may have. Chatbots act as a non-human, and non-judgmental, solution for patients looking for assistance with medical information without sharing their identity
Conversational AI and healthcare chatbots
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.
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.
With conversational AI powered chatbots, healthcare providers can provide more complex and human use cases that can make the patient journey smooth and more comfortable. Conversational AI uses a combination of natural language processing and machine learning to mimic human speak and offer patients a more natural experience with a chatbot.
It goes without saying that conversational AI can be tricky to implement for healthcare providers. When dealing with sensitive patient information, diagnoses, and other important medical information, it’s critical to ensure all the information is correct, accurate, and ethical.
Luckily there are a wide range of use cases that are ideal for healthcare chatbots powered by conversational AI. Let’s look at some of the more popular AI medical chatbot use cases that can elevate patient experiences.
14 uses cases for AI medical chatbots
1. Appointment management
If you aren’t already using a chatbot for appointment management, then it’s almost certain your phone lines are constantly ringing and busy.
With an AI chatbot, patients can send a message to your clinic, asking to book, reschedule, or cancel appointments without the hassle of waiting on hold for long periods of time. Using an AI chatbot can make the entire experience more personal and give them the impression they are speaking with a human.
2. Automate patient onboarding
AI chatbots can help onboard patients with ease. The chatbot can answer all FAQs associated with onboarding at your clinic and you can create conversation flows to guide them through the onboarding process.
Use rich media and features of the channel of your choice to enrich the entire experience. Try sending educational videos over chat so patients can watch and review when it’s convenient for them.
3. Assist in search for nearby clinics or pharmacies
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.
Use the home address your patient provided on file to offer them the closest location, or use GPS location features in the channel you are chatting over to share clinics and pharmacies in their current vicinity.
4. Prescription refill, medication, and vaccination reminders
Life is busy, and remembering to refill prescriptions, take medication, or even stay up to date with vaccinations can sometimes slip people’s minds. With an AI chatbot, you can set up messages to be sent to patients with a personalized reminder.
Patients 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.
5. Support to prepare for diagnostic appointment
Before a diagnostic appointment or testing, patients often need to prepare in advance. Use an AI chatbot to send automated messages, videos, images, and advice to patients in preparation for their appointment.
The chatbot can easily converse with patients and answer any important questions they have at any time of day. The chatbot can also help remind patients of certain criteria to follow such as when to start fasting or how much water to drink before their appointment.
6. Connect with a healthcare professional
Your chatbot can schedule and set up calls with a tele-health professional. Use video or voice to transfer patients to speak directly with a healthcare professional. An AI chatbot is also trained to understand when it can no longer assist a patient, so it can easily transfer patients to speak with a representative or healthcare professional and avoid any unpleasant experiences.
7. Healthcare insurance claims
Healthcare insurance claims are complicated, stressful, and not something patients want to deal with, especially if they are in the middle of a health crisis. Using an AI chatbot for health insurance claims can help alleviate the stress of submitting a claim and improve the overall satisfaction of patients with your clinic. Answer questions about patient coverage and train the AI chatbot to navigate personal insurance plans to help patients understand what medical services are available to them.
Your AI chatbot can also guide patients through the claim process. It’s inevitable that questions will arise, and you can help them submit their claims in a step-by-step process with a chatbot or even remind them to complete their claim with personalized reminders.
8. Provide education after diagnosis
After any diagnosis, patients often turn to the internet for advice and education on their disease – not ideal. An AI chatbot can immediately start interacting with patients, providing educational content, tips, remedies and more to help patients learn more about their diagnosis and how to manage it.
9. Collect patient feedback
Not everyone has time to give you feedback on their experience with your healthcare center but answering a few short questions with an AI chatbot does make the entire processes easier and provides you with more data on how to improve experiences.
After an appointment, send a follow up message checking up on your patient. Train your chatbot to be conversational and collect feedback in a casual and stress-free way.
10. Flows for disease management
Set up messaging flows via your healthcare chatbot to help patients better manage their illnesses. For example, healthcare providers can create message flows for patients who are preparing for gastric bypass surgery to help them stay accountable on the diet and exercise prescribed by their doctor.
11. Request medical records
Patients sometimes need fast access to their medical records. 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. You can speed up time to resolution, achieve higher satisfaction rates and ensure your call lines are free for urgent issues.
12. Send informal messages
Use your AI chatbot to send informal messages to patients. Anything from birthday wishes, event invitations, welcome messages, and more. Sending informational messages can help patients feel valued and important to your healthcare business.
13. Launch disease prevention and treatment campaigns
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.
14. Form fill abandonment
If patients have started filling out an intake form or pre-appointment form on your website but did not complete it, send them a reminder with a chatbot. Better yet, ask them the questions you need answered through a conversation with your AI chatbot. This allows for a more relaxed and conversational approach to providing critical information for their file with your healthcare center or pharmacy.
Examples of a medical chatbots
// Megi Health Platform
Megi Health Platform built their very own healthcare chatbot from scratch using our chatbot building platform Answers. The chatbot helps guide patients through their entire healthcare journey – all over WhatsApp.
The chatbot assists with:
- Recording and controlling blood pressure
- Tracking symptoms
- Patient education
- Connecting with a doctor
// Apollo 24|7
Apollo 24|7 used Infobip’s chatbot building platform to design and launch a WhatsApp chatbot. Patients were able to access their Symptom Checker tool through the chatbot, where they can select their symptoms and get guidance and next steps for treatment. The chatbot created an interactive experience and provided 24/7 medical support when patients need it the most.
Challenges around implementing chatbots for healthcare
Simple queries
False responses
Privacy concerns
- Simple queries only: AI chatbots for healthcare can and should only handle simple queries. Although they can provide conversational and human like responses, it is too risky to trust AI with providing medical advice or complex questions.
- AI hallucinations: Training AI chatbots is a tedious process. This is because you want to avoid AI hallucinations, when AI presents false information as a fact. If an AI chatbot hallucinates a response that leads to harm to a patient, it can impact the reputation of the healthcare center. Training and accounting for biases are critical before launching an AI chatbot for healthcare.
- Privacy concerns: Healthcare data contains very sensitive patient information, and patients could be wary of sharing their data with an AI chatbot. Ensuring your messaging is secure and compliant with local regulations is essential to help curb this concern.
How to manage ethical concerns around healthcare chatbots
AI chatbots for healthcare are not going anywhere. 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.
With that being said, we could end up seeing AI chatbots helping with diagnosing illnesses or prescribing medication. But this is not a simple task. 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.
AI algorithms for virtual assistants and chatbots need to be developed and trained with ethical considerations in mind. They should be unbiased, inclusive, and avoid perpetuating stereotypes or discrimination, and it’s critical they are tested to operate in this manner before being used for patient engagement.
As we continue to see an increase in generative AI adoption, it’s crucial that these tools are constantly monitored for these types of sensitivity flaws, and when providing medical advice are tested to provide appropriate responses.
Ivan Ostojić
Chief Business Officer at Infobip
It is close to impossible that AI chatbots could ever replace doctors or nurses, but it could be the right tool that helps with pre-appointment screening, post-appointment follow-ups, or symptom tracking for patients with chronic illnesses.
Perfecting the use cases mentioned above would provide patients with comfortable, secure, and reliable conversations with their healthcare providers.
But where do you start?
Infobip can help you jump start your conversational patient journeys using AI technology tools. Get an inside look at how to digitalize and streamline your processes while creating ethical and safe conversational journeys on any channel for your patients.
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