The news about the use of digital tools in health care such as Chatbot, emerge daily and with increasing intensity. Now more than ever, patients trust a largely digital-centric approach to healthcare. It is no longer strictly necessary for a human to be at each end of the interaction with an IPS.
One of the most promising areas is the chatbot application in healthcare. The health chatbot market is expected to reach $ 280 million by 2023, up from $ 108 million in 2019. Juniper Research shows that chatbots and automation will enable healthcare professionals to cut costs by $ 7 billion each by the 2022 Year lower.
Properly designed, virtual assistants can be one of the best tools to use in your medical portfolio. The digital health chatbot has several advantages for both doctors and patients. A chatbot can do this effectively, especially when it comes to assigning and canceling queries. It can send patients appointment reminders. And its main advantage over human customer service staff is that it can operate 24/7 without interruptions, execute any number of interactions at the same time and resolve them immediately. The intellectual system, therefore, bears no risks for the patient, which is of crucial importance in medicine.
Benefits of medical chatbots
Scheduling or re-scheduling Appointments
Many health institutions are only able to meet their patients’ requests during business hours, that is, in a period between 8 to 12 hours a day, not counting on weekends, wherein some offices or clinics the service does not occur. Besides, it is routine the situation where a patient wants to make an appointment, or even reschedule an appointment, and has to wait for hours on the phone.
Have you ever thought that many patients prefer to schedule appointments outside business hours? Because of this, it is very important to maintain a service channel 24 hours a day so as not to miss these opportunities. With a virtual secretary (chatbot), the patient can make appointments at any time and instantly. The technology is accessible to the user when he needs it most.
Handle basic queries
Often patients make inquiries that do not require the attention and time of a health professional, but that must be answered on time because they represent some concern for them. As an example, you can take first-time parents who harass doctors by telling them about the baby’s excessive crying; the ideal temperature he should have, the perfect age to give him prepared food, the vaccination plan, etc.
All of these questions are important, but they don’t necessarily have to be answered by a human expert. A health chat bot, properly programmed with intelligence and with an arsenal of medical knowledge in its databases, can ask the user for the baby’s age, symptoms, and medical history and offer proper feedback on the matter.
Provides information on medicine and drugs
People often look online for information about medications that their doctor prescribes or to treat a medical condition. In this regard, chatbots could answer some common questions such as those related to its composition, contraindications, recommended doses, and side effects. They might even recommend over-the-counter medicine to treat simple conditions, like the flu or muscle aches.
In an interview with Techemergence, Dr. Matteo Berlucchi, CEO of Your.MD said that 3 in 5 visits to the doctor are unnecessary. If the patient had access to the right information to make the best decision, then the visit to the doctor’s frequency would be less. By implementing chatbots, the medical center not only reduces care expenses but also simplifies processes and improves the user experience by offering quality care through the devices that you use the most every day: your smartphone and your PC.
To offer a comprehensive customer experience in both online and physical channels, clinics, hospitals, and health centers can complement chatbots with automatic care panels installed in their different locations. Besides, chatbots would facilitate immediate attention to the user, allow their needs to be prioritized and resolved in order of importance and in a much shorter time than under a traditional service model.
Enhances Administrative Procedures
A chatbot at a health care facility can also help with various administrative processes. Administrative questions, such as forms of payment for the consultation or requesting a duplicate ticket, can be answered automatically and instantly.
It can also assist in the company’s internal communication, such as sending information between areas, sending information to suppliers, and questions that arises, end up becoming more agile due to the efficiency provided by the bot.
Conclusion
These are just a few examples of how Chatbots are finding engagement in the healthcare sector. Some uses have already become practice, others are still in the experimental phase, but we are sure that bots will be one of the technologies that will most change and innovate the healthcare sector.