Chatbot breakthrough in the 2020s? An ethical reflection on the trend of automated consultations in health care PMC

Chatbots are able to process large amounts of patient information quickly and accurately. This helps to free up time for medical staff, who can then focus on more important tasks. In addition, chatbots can help to improve communication between patients and medical staff. Emerging trends like increasing service demand, shifting focus towards 360-degree wellbeing, and rising costs of quality care are propelling the adoption of new technologies in the healthcare sector.

Chatbots experience the Black

Box problem, which is similar to many computing systems programmed using ML that are trained on massive data sets to produce multiple layers of connections. Although they are capable of solving complex problems that are unimaginable by humans, these systems remain highly opaque, and the resulting solutions may be unintuitive. This means that the systems’ behavior is hard to explain by merely looking inside, and understanding exactly how they are programmed is nearly impossible.

Virtual nurses

Since healthcare chatbots can be on duty tirelessly both day and night, they are an invaluable addition to the care of the patient. Healthcare chatbots are not only reasonable solutions for your patients but your doctors as well. Imagine how many more patients you can connect with if you save time and effort by automating responses to repetitive questions of patients and basic activities like appointment scheduling or providing health facts. However, healthcare data is often stored in disparate systems that are not integrated. Healthcare providers can overcome this challenge by investing in data integration technologies that allow chatbots to access patient data in real-time. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation have rapidly become popular in many industries, including healthcare.

Conversational AI has been utilized in the healthcare field to provide patients with accessible, knowledgeable, and caring virtual assistants that help them access their health records online. Utilizing chatbots in healthcare can save time and money by helping with several tasks including processing insurance claims, handling appointment scheduling, dispensing prescriptions, and managing patient information. Healthcare chatbots can improve patient care by providing 24/7 access to medical advice and support. This means that patients can get help and advice whenever they need it, without having to wait for an appointment or for a doctor to be available. Additionally, chatbots can also help to remind patients about appointments and medication schedules, which can improve overall compliance with treatment plans. Chatbots are conversation platforms driven by artificial intelligence (AI), that respond to queries based on algorithms.

Improved Patient Care

On top of it, many even struggle with the preparation of this data and setting up dialog flow to make the conversation flow seamlessly. This can be addressed by integrating with electronic medical records and other healthcare systems and adopting tools like dbt. Patients appreciate that using a healthcare chatbot saves time and money, as they don’t have to commute all the way to the doctor’s clinic or the hospital. Chatbots can be accessed anytime, providing patients support outside regular office hours.

The language was restricted to “English” for the iOS store and “English” and “English (UK)” for the Google Play store. The search was further limited using the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) categories “Medical Health” and “Healthy Living”. The IAB develops industry standards to support categorization in the digital advertising industry; 42Matters labeled chatbots in healthcare industry apps using these standards40. Relevant apps on the iOS Apple store were identified; then, the Google Play store was searched with the exclusion of any apps that were also available on iOS, to eliminate duplicates. Chatbots can extract patient information by asking simple questions such as their name, address, symptoms, current doctor, and insurance details.