Chatbots for Healthcare
Modern consumers want fast, easy access to information. They want a self-service option, and they want their interactions to be engaging and personal. The healthcare industry is no exception; patients have similar expectations of their healthcare provider as they do with other consumer sectors. Yet continually rising costs, disparate systems of record, and a lack of patient engagement currently plague the industry.
The prescription is simple: digitization, multi-channel integration, and chatbots for healthcare.
Conversational Healthcare
Traditionally, GUI (graphical user interfaces) required navigating menus and screens and speaking “computer language” rather than human language.
Bots, on the other hand, provide a two-way interaction based on text or voice input and draw context from the conversation to meet a user’s needs. Bots can access various data silos and systems to provide the necessary information and do so securely, in complete compliance with healthcare-relevant standards and regulations. This sort of personalized, all-access approach is dubbed “conversational healthcare.”
Download BrochurePatient Engagement
The non-healthcare industries are setting the bar for healthcare providers. As such, patient engagement is an integral part of the equation of solving both the cost problem and improving the patient/provider relationship.
Today’s consumers and patients want to be able to engage with providers on the channel of their choice, regardless of location, device, or time. Multi-channel integration is crucial to a modern digital strategy, but without streamlined interoperability, a seamless experience between channels and devices would be impossible.
The Digital Prescription
With the right digital strategy and by employing bots with multi-channel integration, healthcare providers can empower not only their caregivers but also their patients, by giving them an improved experience with a self-service option that provides information, resolves issues, and allows access to health records through a simple interaction in real-time.
Bots are able to access data and respond to patients’ requests over a number of channels, regardless of device or location. Furthermore, bots are able to connect healthcare professionals with the necessary data repository that meets their needs. Better informed patients and a proactive relationship with their provider leads to overall improved health, awareness, and streamlined service.
Practical examples of how Bots can help
Below are just some of the capabilities and functions that bots can perform or facilitate, specifically as they relate to the healthcare sector:
- Provide answers to frequently asked questions quickly and efficiently
- Schedule appointments and consultations
- Track patients’ care to reduce readmissions
- Send alerts and notifications for prescription refills and care guidelines
- Streamline admission, discharge and transfer requests
- Alert care teams of urgent changes in patients and emergencies
- Send and receive referrals
- Update record systems with patients’ medical history
- Signal hospital staff if patient needs assistance
- Allow the exchange of data from currently disparate health systems
- Automate data entry to significantly reduce error and avoid double entry
