Healthcare Chatbot Use Cases Blend Tech with Patient Empathy

Patients who often find themselves in need of that personal touch in their care are often left without due to their physicians' busy schedules. Learn how chatbots blend automated care with that much needed empathy.

Healthcare is a very personal, social discipline. Many providers join the profession first and foremost for the opportunity to help and heal. Unfortunately, providers have incredibly busy schedules and aren’t on hand to meet with patients as often as they’d like. Patients can easily turn to the internet for answers, but that lacks the personal approach that’s often needed when dealing with a sensitive topic like health.

That’s where healthcare chatbots can help blur the line between personal and technical support.

What is a Chatbot?

A chatbot is a program capable of simulating conversation with humans through images or text.

Like the name implies, chatbots are more than automated messages, they’re intended to feel more like a human and engage users more personally. Aside from engagement, healthcare chatbots also process and answer several requests and inquiries simultaneously, freeing up staff for issues that actually require more hands-on attention.

Simple Chatbots

Simple chatbots are built to work based on pre-programmed keywords. When a user interacts with the chatbot and mentions one of those keywords, the bot will spit out a pre-designated answer it was programmed to give in response to reading that keyword. If a keyword isn’t mentioned, the chatbot can’t respond.

Simple chatbots are very easy to implement because of their pre-formulated responses, but are very limited in the kinds of responses they’re able to give.

Smart Chatbots

Using AI, smart chatbots are able to actively learn and craft responses based on previous conversations. Because of this, they can provide much more sophisticated, nuanced answers to users. Interactions with users on chats with a smart chatbot are saved and processed, further training the AI and adding to its ability to answer questions.

Unfortunately, because human speech is so varied, there’s plenty of opportunity for smart chatbots to misunderstand users, meaning these variants of a chatbot need to be meticulously trained.

Unlike simple chatbots, these chatbots are harder to implement, but, once they’ve been trained, provide a much more effective service.

Healthcare Chatbot Use Cases

1. Patient Education

Doctors are wells of knowledge when it comes to patient conditions. Unfortunately, they aren’t always available to answer questions due to their heavy workload. Fortunately, chatbots have been deployed to deliver the personal touch a google search can’t deliver.

CancerChatbot by Csource, for example, is designed to help cancer patients traverse the most stressful experience of their lives.The chat tool responds to patient inquiries in a human way by pulling into it its database of resources and answering questions with empathy and tact. The chatbot is even designed to link out to support groups it feels may help the patient.

2. Clinician Assistants

Chatbots like SafedrugBot function as an assistant for physicians in need of information on a specific drug. Using these types of chatbots, clinicians can simply type commands into their device to receive information on active ingredients within a drug or even to find alternatives to the drug under question.

Use cases such as these fill the role of an assistant who may not be on hand. Furthermore, a lot of the legwork that would have to be done in order to look up a drug and how it would react to a certain patient is taken off a doctor’s plate, giving them bandwidth for more personal engagement with their patients.

3. Data Gathering

Apps like Sensely use a built in digital nurse that speaks to patients through text and speech, guiding them through the process of reading blood pressure, setting appointments, and more. Based on answers patients give to questions asked by the bot, it can either recommend they see a doctor or even call and set an appointment on their behalf.

Using a backlog of previous interactions, the app can behave more human and provide the personal touch and empathy many would seek out in a nurse in a more accessible way.

Emphasize Empathy When Searching for Healthcare Chatbots

Keeping empathy at the forefront of how patients are treated has seen proven results and increased patient satisfaction across several different hospitals. In fact, a study by GYANT found that patient engagement rates rose 82% when patients were reached out to by a chatbot with a more empathetic, understanding tone. For more information on tech that can make incorporating healthcare chatbots much more streamlined, contact an expert from Cybernet’s team today.