How AI Chatbots Help the Healthcare Industry

AI healthcare chatbots promise to change the world of healthcare, driving dramatic behavioral change in how patients interact with providers. 

By building an AI chatbot to serve as an intuitive self-service option for patients, accessible 24/7 and from any location on Earth, you’ll reduce the pressure of patient demand on your administrative team, improve patient satisfaction and become more cost-effective across your entire business.

Related content:

• How Do AI Chatbots Work?
• Getting Started with Chatbots
• 9 Questions to Ask Chatbot Vendors
• Conversational AI in Healthcare: Benefits & Examples
• How Conversational & Generative AI Are Transforming Customer Service in Healthcare

In this guide, we’ll explain what AI chatbots really are, how they can help your business and why the term ‘chatbot’ is already becoming a relic of the recent past…

What Is a Healthcare AI Chatbot?

To begin with, it’s important to recognize that a traditional ‘chatbot’ is now outdated technology. 

Chatbots were initially presented as a self-service option to help guide users through administrative processes such as appointment booking or order tracking. Unfortunately, chatbots using non-AI technology are limited to pre-set journeys and responses, making them limited and often leading to errors and user frustration.

AI has given businesses a whole new opportunity to deploy a superior digital chat option. Digital Chat AI Agents powered by a combination of Conversational AI and Generative AI provide a far more intuitive system capable of dealing with complex user needs and resolving issues automatically. 

To be clear, a modern healthcare AI chatbot is a Digital Chat AI Agent that users can interact with. As it is integrated with your core systems and built with an understanding of the healthcare sector, the agent can guide users through self-service needs such as managing appointments, updating personal information or checking medical details. 

Because the chatbot uses Conversational AI, it can identify and understand context, meaning if a user request is urgent or needs human intervention, the AI will recognize that and pass it to your human employees. 

How Are AI Chatbots Changing the Healthcare Industry?

Digital technology has driven a rise in self-service options across all industries. As a result, users interacting with businesses now expect to be able to self-serve whenever possible – especially for basic tasks such as changing personal details. 

Healthcare businesses are no exception to this. Patients want to use self-service to accomplish even more emotive or sensitive tasks, such as managing appointments, checking test results or reporting symptoms. 

The pressure is, therefore, on healthcare providers to deploy a self-service option that can accommodate these more challenging needs and maintain a high level of security and privacy to comply with the rules and regulations in your territory. 

Traditional chatbots can’t live up to this task as they are too prone to errors or misuse. Instead, Digital Chat AI Agents offer your users the nuanced self-service options they need. With one in place in your organization, patients can access instant support and either have tasks solved by the AI or be routed to a team member. 

This, in turn, means your business wastes far less time on the mundane elements of patient interaction. There is no more back-and-forth over appointment times or asking a user to repeat their personal details for the fourth time that day to verify them. The AI chatbot will have already either solved the problem itself or will provide you with all the background information you need, leaving you free to focus on solving the problem itself. 

So, to answer the question about how AI chatbots are changing the healthcare industry, they are driving a significant change in how patients interact with healthcare providers, empowering them to complete basic actions without intervention – leaving you free to focus your expert resources on providing care/health services in the most efficient way possible. 

What Are the Pain Points of Healthcare AI Chatbots?

Many ‘pain points’ associated with chatbots are holdovers from a pre-AI era. Before AI, chatbots were prone to a host of errors because they lacked Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and relied solely on keywords and preprgrammed rules. Yet, they were touted as conversational which led to a massive gap between the promises and what was delivered. 

Though Conversational AI helps avoid similar errors by understanding the context and intent of a user’s query, there are still some pain points to be aware of – especially in the healthcare sector. 

First and foremost is applying the strict rules and regulations governing your business. Though the rules vary depending on which territories you operate in, it’s fair to say that every country on planet Earth places greater scrutiny on how healthcare businesses interact with customers and handle information. 

The good news is that AI Agents are actually a positive thing for maintaining compliance in your business. While human employees and patients may miss critical steps in any process, an AI Agent does not. It follows the orders it is given and will only progress once it has gathered all the necessary information and followed each step.

Another pain point is applying an AI healthcare chatbot to your processes. Some organizations need more time to implement a digital self-service option than to define real use cases or identify user needs. This may result in an inefficient system that fails to achieve what users actually need and ultimately creates more problems than it solves. To avoid this, you must identify clear use cases and build your AI chatbot to help facilitate them. 

Benefits of Healthcare AI Chatbots

AI chatbots (specifically in the context of Digital Chat AI Agents) provide lots of advantages for a healthcare business, whether you’re directly involved in patient care or operate a secondary service such as health insurance. The key benefits include:

Boost Resource Efficiency

Chatbots can answer queries instantly, with no waiting times or call queues. Patients who have questions or need to accomplish tasks can, therefore, resolve issues without any burden on your human team members. Your employees will no longer need to deal with basic tasks and can instead prioritize cases based on urgency.

Improves Accessibility

Accessibility is all about accommodating user needs. AI chatbots help improve accessibility by serving as a 24/7 source of support for customers/patients who can access it on their own terms. AI Agents can also operate in multiple languages, making it possible for patients to type in their native tongue and receive human-like responses in their own language. Compared to making a physical call, a patient interacting with your Digital Chat AI Agent can do so at a time that suits them using a device they feel comfortable with. 

Supports Growing Self-service Needs

Users increasingly look to businesses to provide self-service options. In healthcare, AI chatbots offer a versatile solution where users can accomplish not only simple tasks such as changing personal details – but can also guide them through more complex requests such as booking an appointment. Empowering users to do more via self-service frees up your team’s time and improves patient satisfaction. 

Delivers Better Patient Experiences

Patients interacting with healthcare providers often do so in a negative state of mind. They may be anxiously trying to book an appointment or worried about symptoms and want to report them to a clinician. An AI chatbot helps reduce this anxiety by giving users instant support. They don’t need to provide personal details or talk about symptoms over the phone – they can do so in confidence with the digital agent. 

Use cases of Healthcare AI Chatbots

How does an AI chatbot function in a healthcare setting? Let’s look at some of the most critical use cases to show how effective AI can be in simplifying some of this sector’s frustrating, challenging processes. 

Scheduling and Managing Appointments

Dealing with patient appointments is one of the clearest use cases for AI chatbots in healthcare. The user can start a conversation with the chatbot and request an appointment, which the AI will recognize and begin to action. 

Depending on how you manage appointments internally, the AI will offer the user available dates or send them in a mini-app booking system. The chatbot will wait until the booking is confirmed and then ask any follow-up questions or provide further clarity for the patient. 

Once booked, patients can use the chatbot in the future to check the appointment details or even request a reschedule. The chatbot can again perform this action and update the patient’s file, your internal calendar, and any relevant clinician’s schedule. 

Collecting Patient Data and Documentation

Chatbots can also help reduce the administrative burden of creating or collecting patient data. The AI can guide a user through a series of questions aimed at gathering the necessary information. It can also ask a patient to send a photograph or document and then attach it to their file, meaning all a clinician or other human professional has to do is pull up the record, and they’ll have everything they need to progress the case.

Facilitating Billing Processes

The billing process in a healthcare environment can be tricky due to miscommunications, payment processing problems and heightened patient stress.

An AI Chatbot can help improve your billing process in many different ways – whether that’s ensuring all costs are made clear when a patient first attempts to book an appointment or guiding a user through each step in your payment process to ensure it is made successfully. At any point, the AI is capable of answering patient questions or easing concerns. Ultimately, this streamlines your payment process and helps keep your finances on track. 

Protecting Privacy

Most healthcare organizations operate under strict rules and regulations set by their relevant geographic authority. Some international providers even have to juggle different requirements based on each country they operate from. The risk associated with failing to comply can be significant, leading to fines or even legal action. 

A Digital Chat AI Agent can help a business protect itself by ensuring all steps within any given process have been followed in the correct order. Any data collected during patient interactions is stored in your chosen format and location. 

Examples of AI chatbots in healthcare

If you need more information about how AI chatbots can support your work in healthcare, it pays to look at a solid real-world example of the technology in action. 

For global health brand Virgin Pulse, their existing Zendesk Livechat function wasn’t meeting expectations. Integrating Cognigy.AI’s AI Agent into the system became a far more effective self-service solution that drove a 10x improvement in containment rates. The intuitive AI Agent resonated with their user base and helped it grow from 12,000 to 30,000 in just one month. 

Interested in learning more? Click here to read the full case study.  

Best practices for AI chatbots in healthcare

As with any new AI integration, there are certain considerations to consider when creating an AI chatbot. Here are some best practices to help guide your decisions. 

Define Use Cases First

The versatility of AI is exciting, but without defined use cases, a chatbot may be too broad. You can’t expect any technology to solve every need, and a virtual agent is no exception. Instead, you should create real-world use cases based on your business and use these to guide an AI chatbot’s parameters. 

Determine Access Requirements

If a Digital Chat AI Agent operates in isolation, it can hold conversations and support users with basic queries. It can't take more decisive actions until it has access to other systems in your business. 

By identifying use cases, you can start to consider which systems/tools/technologies your chatbot needs access to. For example, the Virgin Pulse case study mentioned above saw an AI Agent integrated with Zendesk LiveChat. Once you have an idea of which systems the AI needs to interact with, you can better determine how that will work and what measures you need to keep each system safe.

Move Away From ‘Chatbot’ Terminology

Customers are wary of ‘chatbots’ due to historic issues and limited functionality. A modern business calling its self-service option a chatbot may find users naturally distrust it or even aim to break it. An AI Agent that uses NLU (Natural Language Understanding) is a full evolution away from chatbots, and this is worth making clear in any branding or messaging you put out to your users or even internal team. 

Cognigy Can Implement an AI Chatbot Solution for the Healthcare Sector

Self-service is one of the most important trends in modern user behavior. Healthcare organizations that can build an intuitive self-service system will now stand out from their competitors and improve patient relationships. You will drive better outcomes from users and save time and money within your organization, leading to more cost-efficient operations across the board. 

Don’t be let down by outdated notions of chatbot technology. Choose Cognigy.AI to implement an exceptional Digital Chat AI Agent that serves as the first point of contact for customers from all walks of life and gives them instant support in a language that suits them. 

Our team knows the healthcare industry inside and out, so any technology we provide will be built to address your sector's rules, regulations, and privacy concerns. Contact us to book your demo.