According to The Wall Street Journal, Healthcare costs in the US grew up to 4.2% to 4.3 trillion USD in 2021, and the trend is definitely continuing this year and furthermore. The Healthcare industry is gigantic and its chances to take advantage of AI are enormous. Making systems and processes better and better or creating new treatments, AI boasts to improve the quality of life for millions of people.
We have already witnessed how AI technology is starting to be introduced in various fields of the healthcare environment. It is being used to make the most of supply chains, manufacturing and office management workflows. Tens of algorithms have been upgraded in medical imaging, and Halicin, for instance, was the first antibiotic developed with the help of AI tools.
As AI helps to develop new treatment protocols, medicine and medical devices, patients’ needs will be a primary area of consideration. So will patients use healthcare chatbots that AI can offer?
Before You Decide You Need To See Your Doctor
It’s been more than 10 years since Siri was integrated into the 5s iPhone. Up to that time asking a phone to tell you the weather forecast in public would have gotten you some pretty weird looks. Today we practically can’t live without these AI powered chatbots, and these technologies have already reached the Healthcare space. What do you do before going to see your doctor? You look at your symptoms, of course. 89% of patients look up their health symptoms online before fixing the appointment. This isn’t a good idea, and the outcomes are usually bad, giving you more anxiety in the first place. Luckily, chat bots startups realize this problem and are solving it with AI powered messaging.
What Can Chatbots Do To Help You?
Imagine how independent and cool you would feel as a patient by taking the smartphone out of your pocket, opening up an app and getting what your illness is in a few minutes after sharing some messages with an AI driven health buddy. Well, that’s where our everyday life is headed with chat bots.
So what actually happens after you google your symptoms and falsely diagnosed yourself? You’ll go even more into the deep waters and search for more particular info on the sickness you’ve got. If what Google told you is true and it’s bad you’ll want to study tons of that kind of material and try to “cure” yourself a bit faster. The truth is, there is a HUGE problem with free access to health information on the Internet.
Now we know that the majority of the information is not accurate, but some websites with reliable medical resources do exist. You can check right away – The American Academy of Pediatrics or The American Academy of Neurology. So why are these websites more well-known? They are for professionals. Unfortunately, they are stuffed with terms and slang that is difficult to understand for an average patient.
Luckily, some chatbots for healthcare are solving your issue by pairing the symptom diagnosis capability with a database of patient friendly and accurate information for their review. Some of these chatbots even crowdsource helpful resources that patients can use that they wouldn’t otherwise find out about.
So now that you are on the right track and you have diagnosed yourself with the help of an AI driven chat bot and have all the accurate information you need thanks to its database, you might need treatment. Depending on your ailment you might need multiple prescriptions that need to be taken at different times throughout a day. Now that can get pretty overwhelming especially for older people. What is even worse is that missing prescriptions for eldery patients can sometimes have serious consequences.
Diversity
Thanks to tech innovation we can have healthcare chatbots that are making wonders in patient reminders, meditation and mental health areas as well. Some of them only need a voice command that includes the prescription name, its dosage and intake timing so that it can give you alerts. Others teach patients cognitive behavior therapy through daily activities. There are also those that help patients rehab while in recovery after surgery, some have even been developed just to be your friend in case you are lonely and need to talk about your day.
There is even one type that functions like a digital therapist. Mimicking a patient’s way of talking, it asks questions that make him/her open up and reveal true emotions. This anonymity is very precious if we talk about a sensitive and delicate state of health, and here we can already see how chatbots have already entered the area of human compassion.
It seems like no matter what area of healthcare there is a chat bot for that. And if it learns to function to the level of a general physician, the amount of doctors visits in person will go down to 60%!
Artificial Intelligence and Data Managing
Working with huge amounts of personal and medical data takes a lot of human effort. AI made it automated and possible to be perfectly organized and efficiently studied. This is often a life saving result as a lot of time is saved for immediate analyzing and making a fast and accurate diagnosis and therefore effective treatment.
What is also very important with AI is that it makes the whole industry secure. No doubt, patients’ data is very sensitive, and the reputation of your company depends on how strong or vulnerable it is to potential data breaches. That is why Healthcare desperately needs a perfect security policy. That is where AI saves the situation with constantly updating software solutions.
Conclusion
We live in an exciting time filled with innovation driven by these AI companions. Chatbots and AI are evolving with every passing day. The better they are at understanding symptoms, the less need to pay for a doctor’s appointment. AI systems, at the same time, transform Healthcare into a safer space due to automated processes and data storage and analysis. Both doctors and patients are already enjoying the benefits these solutions bring.If you would like more information on chatbots in the healthcare industry and how they are helping patients reach out to our team.
