Healthcare Chatbot: Benefits, Use Cases, Guide to Build 

If you often browse through different companies’ websites, you might notice a floating round thingy with a smiley face that says “Need help?”. Well, that’s what we call a chatbot.  

Chatbots are no longer something strange to most people. Because we see them everywhere these days, not just on websites but also on mobile applications. These chatbots can actually be used in the healthcare industry as well. Did you know that?  

Healthcare chatbots can be really useful for both patients and medical staff. With their help, you can just do a self-diagnosis at home by chatting with an AI chatbot of a hospital and schedule your regular healthcare check-up in no time. Hospitals will also have more time and effort for severe cases. 

You might be still wondering about what a healthcare chatbot is, how you can use it and how you can build one for your own clinic, don’t you worry too much. We’ve got you covered because everything you need to know is here in this article.

I. What is Healthcare Chatbot 

You might already have some idea of what a healthcare chatbot is from our introduction above, but let’s talk about it a little bit more. 

So, what is a healthcare chatbot? It is basically software that is built on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning algorithms, and other technologies like natural language processing (NLP) that can interact with people by voice chat or texting. The cool thing about chatbots is that they are available anytime you need. So, you don’t have to worry about them going on vacations or taking breaks and you not getting the support you need. 

These chatbots are especially useful in cases when you just have questions or concerns about health-related issues and don’t require any intensive checkup. You can get quality information, recommendations on what you should do to address your specific problem from legit, verified inputs from healthcare professionals and not Google search results.  

You can get data about your health record, knowing how your treatment is going and when to have the next appointment with your doctor. All of this shall be done without the need to be present at the hospital. Say bye bye to standing in line for hours just to get diagnosed! 

Healthcare staff also benefit from healthcare chatbots as they will have more time to focus on the tasks that require more attention like treating hospitalized patients, doing research to find a cure for a disease or discover a drug, etc. All the basic and administrative work can be automated, saving thousands of physicians from being overworked.

Also read: What is eMAR in Healthcare – Comprehensive Guide 2024 

II. Benefits of AI Chatbots in Healthcare 

With their nature of being available 24/7 and speedy, healthcare chatbots can bring so many advantages to medical centers. Thanks to these chatbots, hospitals can really cut down significant yearly expenses, operate more efficiently and build a strong relationship with their customers. Let’s find out what the specific pros of chatbot are for the healthcare industry: 

• Available anytime: Unless your case is an emergency, you probably won’t be able to book an appointment with a doctor and get diagnosed in the middle of the night. Humans need rest, but machines don’t. You can reach healthcare chatbots at any time that you need for your concern. 

• Respond in real-time: Except for when your internet connection is unstable, chatbots can generally reply to whatever questions you have almost immediately. There is no need to worry about limited resources as well, because healthcare chatbots often come in SaaS (software as a service) plans of big companies like AWS. 

• Provide medical information: As these bots are built on the big three (AI, machine learning, and big data), they can provide you with accurate information about medical related issues in just a blink of an eye. 

• No judgment involved: When patients raise their concerns through chatbots, they may choose to stay anonymous. So, even if they are seeking help for problems like mental illness or STDs, they won’t need to worry about being judged by anyone. This will allow them to be more open in describing their situation and makes it easier to identify the right health issue and the right treatment. 

• Reduce readmission: Healthcare chatbots can help both patients and doctors to follow-up on the patient’s health and treatment plan after they have been discharged from the hospital. This makes sure that everything is under control and reduces the need for hospitalization again. 

• Reduce healthcare expenses: With chatbots helping out, hospitals can cut down on a lot of money that was previously needed for regular tests, check-ups, and administrative procedures. 

III. 10 Use Cases of AI Chatbot Healthcare  

1. Managing appointment

If you do not currently use chatbot for appointment, then probably, you are always hearing calls all day. Wanna fix that? Use healthcare chatbot. For this thing, the patient can send a message to the clinic requesting them to schedule, reschedule or even cancel the appointments without much waiting time. Leveraging AI healthcare chatbot is a far more personalized process and feels like talking to a real person.

2. Searching for clinics or pharmacies

The other way through which the healthcare chatbots are employed is in helping patients search for clinic, pharmacy, or a health facility fast depending on the need that the patient has. The specifics that would be available from the chatbot include; The operating times, contact details, and user reviews. It can use, for example, a patient’s home address or location services to determine the choices based on the GPS.

3. Streamlining patient onboarding

In the area of patient onboarding, healthcare chatbots can be operationally efficient where AI fuels them. As they accompany frequent inquiries about the onboarding procedure in your clinic, they can. Guide patients through it. This way, through including media and chat options like the option to share video, patients can conveniently watch and review them.

4. Preparing for appointments

Based on prior appointments or tests that need to be conducted patients make some essential preparations. Through an AI chatbot one can be able to forward automated messages, videos, images and tips to facilitate their adequate preparations. It is there to respond to questions at any time and to provide cues for patients such as when to start fasting or the amount of water they should take.

5. Supporting with the healthcare insurance claims

Health care insurance claims are rather difficult and stressful to maneuver through, during health-related calamities. The automation of claims submission through the use of healthcare chatbots backed by Artificial Intelligence reduces stress levels as well as improves patients’ satisfaction. 

It can answer questions about insurance revenue in aiding insurance, comprehending their individual insurance policies and the patients in explaining the process of claims by providing tips and gentle reminders.

6. Collecting patient feedback

It is not always convenient to respond to the questions related to one’s experience in a healthcare center but answering a few questions through an AI healthcare chatbot helps the center gather more information on the experiences that need to be improved. After the appointment, the patient will be notified with a follow-up message. Make the chatbot friendly and gain feedback without stressing the customer or the user.

7. Providing medical records

There are times patients require documents that are hard-copy, and they need them as soon as possible. Rather than waiting for the directed healthcare call center or waiting a long time for an email containing records, use AI healthcare chatbot to do this. You can make the resolutions faster, have better customer satisfaction and leave the call lines open for emergent circumstances.

8. Launching disease prevention and treatment campaigns

This suggests that simple informative campaigns may help increase disease awareness and how diseases can be treated. Prior to flu season, initiate campaigns to advise patients on how they can avoid getting colds and flu. It will be appropriate to send out campaigns such as those that relate to heart attacks in women, strokes, or how to check for the presence of breast lumps. These campaigns can be directed to such targets and assist patients in gaining knowledge of the required health measures.

9. Connecting patient to healthcare professional

Your healthcare chatbot can arrange a call and appointment with tele-health professional. Employ video or voice for triage of patients to health care workers. To prevent encountering any unpleasant scenarios AI chatbot is trained to identify when it cannot longer assist a patient, it will then connect that patient with a given representative or a healthcare personnel.

10. Adherence to prescription, medication and vaccination reminder

You know, life is full of various activities, sometimes you just forget that you need to refill a prescription, take pills, or update vaccines. AI chatbot allows you to schedule messages, so the patients will receive relevant messages at the right time. A patient can further engage with bot if they have some other question such as dosages or if follow up appointment or even some side effect that needs attention.

IV. Top Healthcare Chatbot in 2024

1. Buoy Health

This healthcare chatbot assists to determine your symptoms, understand how severe they are and whether you may treat them at home, go to the doctor or urgently go to the hospital. 

Key features 

• Based on the symptoms, he/she examines then offers advice. 

• Can provide proper and efficient answers using a massive base of medical information. 

• Lets you create profiles so that you can get medical history recommendations that are more suitable. 

Advantages 

• Offers information to assist you in making better sense of your prodromal signs and other associated ailments. 

• Organization of the health profiles on the platform is possible for the family members. 

Disadvantages 

• May not include all the aspects of health or treat minor and complicated illnesses. 

• Although it is possible to create an interface where you can experience the situation virtually and make decisions as if you are there virtually, the modulated depth of people’s expertise and empathy cannot be substituted by Virtual Experience Interface.

2. Ada Health

It is a simply free chatbot, your AI health buddy. Symptom checker, history reference, and probability of a disease checker all in one. Ada will also let you know how critical your situation is and what next step you should take. 

Key features 

• It provides individualized information in relation to the symptoms, past medical events, and lots of other complaints. 

• Scans the risk level of the identified medical conditions. 

• Provides individual counseling as to what the client should do next. 

Advantages 

• Available in many languages so that different people from different countries can use it. 

• Compatible with wearable health gadgets. 

Disadvantages 

• You can be misdiagnosed particularly if you give half balled or wrong details when answering the questions. 

• Might not have details on some of the specific or less standard types of diseases. 

3. Woebot Health

Woebot Health is another AI application for people’s mental health since it provides support for their well-being and is available and anonymous. It includes ways of coping with stress, anxiety and the likes. 

Key features 

• That enables users to monitor aspects that include blood pressure or blood sugar levels. 

• Integrates features of fun to provide a package of self-care that is easier to follow because it is more fun. 

• Users interact with it and in the subsequent days/weeks/months the bot is designed to become more efficient in the support given. 

Advantages 

• Provides anonymity to the users and you feel free to seek help as much as you can without bias. 

• In most cases, online therapy charges are lower than regular face-to-face therapy sessions. 

Disadvantages 

• Possibly lacks some features of the treatment of mental disorders. 

• The users may encounter professionalism issues or even technical problems. 

4. Your.MD

Your.MD is a wellness companion based on the AI system that provides health and wellness advice as per your response. All information provided is accurate about the health and, depending on the question, the chatbot provides clear and concise answers. 

Key features 

• Orients its clients to health through advice and suggestions on how to remain healthy without getting sick in the first place. 

• Offers immediate minor self-care tips for conditions that can be treated at home. 

• Holds features which make it possible for the user to monitor his or her progression over the selected period. 

Advantages 

• Provides friendly advice related to the problem you are experiencing, your overall health history, and your lifestyle. 

• Rich with gaming elements and interaction, it will keep you hooked. 

Disadvantages 

• The individualization might be low so the advice given might be more general. 

• It is widely understandable that users may have some prevailing discourses of concern about how their health data is being gathered, stored and most importantly shared. 

V. How to Build a Custom Healthcare Chatbot 

1. Define the problems to focus on

Determine issues that should be solved by the chatbot. Will it ease the task of checking on the symptoms, making an appointment or even providing a detailed account of the patient? After elaborating objectives for both chatbot use and application describe what you want to realize with it and how you will assess its effectiveness (injection of wait times, increasing patient engagement, or handling typical inquiries).

2. Choose your platform

Determine whether you will require the rule-based system or the chatbot AI system. This depends on the features, cost and the practicality of adopting each of the approaches to the firm. Second, choose a suitable chatbot platform and identify it. Ensure the platform can interface with other structures in your healthcare such as the electronic health records (EHR) or customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

3. Design the conversation flow

Schedule by identifying how chatbot will approach users and what it will say. From the incidental initial salutation to possible directions of conversation depending on the user’s answers. Choose carefully the eventualities that patients should experience and avoid getting caught in conversational latches.

4. Develop the healthcare chatbot

If using AI, the AI, in this case, is chatbot, updated with the right medical data as information fed to it. Make it subject to data privacy. Select platforms to build from, then utilize them to build the chatbot, this might involve coding or possibly no coding depending on the platform. There are some platforms that will develop healthcare chatbot for you and then your team will be in charge of operating the bot.

5. Test and refine your healthcare chatbot

When using flow, do extensive testing internally to check for glitches and see if the flow meets expectations before going live. As with other platforms you might have mechanisms of testing and developing responses. In the first stage of testing, get feedback from a small end-user group and incorporate the feedback for making modifications.

6. Ensure compliance and security

Ensure that chatbot adhere to health standards such as the HIPAA in the United States or GDPR in Europe and ensure the security of the patient’s data.

7. Launch your healthcare chatbot

Launch chatbot to your healthcare facility’s website, application, or other contact points with the patients, such as WhatsApp.

8. Constantly check and enhance your healthcare chatbot

To get a better understanding of its performance, trace and monitor how chatbot is doing, the type of queries the chatbot performs best and those it does worst. Set up a conversation check in order to identify conflict prone areas. This activity of your platform could provide suggestions for analysis such as User Flow Analytics or Live Chat Analytics. One should update the chatbot with new information with reference to the following data and also monitor its effectiveness.

VI. Adamo Software – Your Reliable Partner for Chatbot Development in Healthcare 

If you are struggling to develop your healthcare chatbot, let Adamo Software help you with that. We are amiable Vietnamese software developers with a team of prominent software developers, offering high quality software solutions at quite affordable rates for all industries including health. With the help of modern technologies, we provide mobile applications, web-based solutions, and AI integration solutions for your business. 

Get in touch with us today and enhance your healthcare service delivery.