How chatbots can improve the delivery of healthcare services
Chatbots seem to be the big news of this ending year and will be more important in the next years. A chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with human users.
Why a chatbot?
I am a software developer from a lot of years and i have learned time by time that people expect information any time, any place, anywhere. If your software not provide instantly what the users want, they move on from your product. The software interaction is the key of the success now and in the future. Build a chatbot will be an obvious choice if you want to reach the market. Already today we can see that the spread of the chat system is global and this phenomenon is not going to stop. Where i can find chatbots? Chatbots live on a messenger apps like Facebook Messages, Telegram , Kik and on many others messaging services that are already installed in your smartphone.
Why the use of the bots in connection with healthcare service can be a revolution?
Delivering healthcare services via bots can reduce the increasing healthcare costs and improve the quality and effectiveness of healthcare and last but not least we can make healthcare knowledge completely free accessible to everyone globally. A bot, for example, can start a chatting session with patients in an interactive way. A bot can be created to help patients to articulate their symptoms without a human interaction or can be used to suggests a possible diagnosis to a doctor who can then recommend the next suitable medical steps for the patient.
Bots in Healthcare
The world’s largest technology companies have understand the power behind chatbots and healthcare services, the result is that they are adding chatbots to their business models in really fast way. They know that healthcare in connection with messaging apps will be sure a growth area over the next decade.
Healthcare is a new revenue and profit opportunity and many companies (Google, IBM , Microsoft and others) want change the face of healthcare through cognitive platforms to provide value to providers, payers and partners.
Behind the big companies there are many other more small that are trying to offer, right now, interesting services but there is a lot of work to do because people expect a natural language interaction and context-relevant, data-rich feedback and this require a lot of data power and resources not always avaliable.
Thousands of conversational messaging bots are being launched daily
During the last few months I have spent my time in building a chatbot that could be of help to the medical staff to offer assistance to pregnant and breastfeeding women. You can read more here or give a try by visiting https://telegram.me/safedrugbot
Before i start my journey in developing my bot, I used part of my time to find information about what type of bots related to health are already in use. I want share with you this short bot list i have compiled:
Melody (chinese only) medical chatbot, was create to help with the diagnoses of illnesses. This is being built into the Baidu Doctor app on iOS and Android. Which allows people to contact local doctors, book appointments and ask questions.
Your.MD calls itself an artificial intelligence personal health assistant. It is chatbot that you can ask healthcare related questions. For example, you can ask about your symptoms. It is available on major messaging platforms here.
MedWhat is another artificial intelligence medical assistant that can answer questions, such as drug side effects, in a chat format. It is currently available as standalone app here.
Joy, a chatbot developed on Facebook’s Messenger platform that tracks users mental health state-of-mind, does not seek to replace therapists, but acts as a gateway chatbot to encourage a conversation that eventually culminates with the user seeking qualified help if required. http://www.hellojoy.ai/
Florence is a chatbot to support physicians and nurses collecting the right information and therefore increase the efficiency of the overall health care system by exposing three main functions (Medication reminder, Symptom Checker, Find location like a doctor or a pharmacy) https://florence.chat/
Eva is a Women’s Health chatbot. Through micro-interactions adapted to each user Eva collects mood bits that are processed to build a command centre that helps women understand the processes in their bodies and adapt their lives to accommodate them. https://bots4health.com/
Some final thoughts
ChatBots offer a great user experience. Think about it, you not need so many hoops to jump through the informations. The user does not have to download and install an app, he needs only to type some text to get answers. A bot have always an open channel of communication with the user and can take care of routine activities or provide important informations. We are at the dawn of a road already marked, all this will lead to personal assistants who will have the task of guarding our health all the day every day.
The future is not that far away.
