Technology has taken huge steps in improving healthcare development in the past decade and one of the latest innovations is chatbots in healthcare industry.
Healthcare services are a necessity and more delayed the service, the higher the risk of health issues. Thus people started appointment-based phone sessions, video sessions and informative websites to help patients find the right health service based on their symptoms.
However, since health issues are a sensitive matter and require a fast solution, people recently start to rely more on chatbots for health information
Share of consumers who used Chatbots for communication with companies – Source – statista
A chatbot will help your patients feel like they are speaking to a real person and will be directed to the right service or department, without having to appoint a team for actual live chat customer service. According to a study, physicians believe that chatbots can increase scheduling doctor appointments
Most chatbots these days have machine learning and A.I. technologies that will improve the chat responses every day and will be able to answer different variations of the same questions accurately.
So it has now become evident that Chatbots industry are a must.
| Table Of Contents |
| 1. Advantages of Using Chatbots in Healthcare Industry |
| 2. Best Chatbots in Healthcare Industry |
| 3. How To Choose The Right Chatbots in Healthcare Industry? |
Advantages of Using Chatbots for medical reason
Chatbots were more used to help in e-commerce services or marketing purposes. However, the healthcare industry has now seen great light from using smart, reliable chatbots.
There are several benefits to using Chatbots for any healthcare service providers in improving service quality. Let us look at 5 vital reasons to use chatbots for healthcare services.
Real Time Patient Engagement
Most healthcare service providers are always busy with medical activities. And it is often difficult to maintain a live chat session.
A chatbot can provide answers to a few basic questions and often identify what issue a person is facing. Thus carrying out a screening process to understand what health service he/she might need.
However, the responses are real-time so patients feel assisted even without a real person handling the chat service.
Symptom analysis for accurate service
Few complex chatbots have amazing symptom analysis systems where a patient may just state the symptoms and the chatbot can identify what health issue he/she is suffering from.
Also, if a patient states that he/she is unsure but might be suffering from a certain disease, the chatbot may ask questions of symptoms to find out if there is a possibility that the patient was right about his/her disease.
These are vital features to consider and helps to identify exactly what health issue the patient might be facing, what treatment he/she may require, and which doctor to an appointment this patient to.
Handle Appointment Scheduling
Some chatbots can be integrated to appointment availability calendar of doctors, so that people may set appointments directly from the chat service, without even calling.
So, if a patient may specify the doctor’s name and what he specializes in, the chatbot can detect the person and present the available times when the patient can set an appointment to visit.
Also, a patient may state he/she is looking for a certain specialist, and a doctor’s list within that specialty may be presented to choose from to schedule an appointment.
Thus, very efficient and time-saving
Observe Patients Remotely
A chatbot can be set up so that patients may be regularly monitored to help doctors understand their health conditions.
For example, let’s say, after taking health service for diabetes, a patient may be asked to regularly answer questions related to health factors, such as sugar level, everyday diet, etc, through the chatbot. Based on these data, the chatbot may suggest the patient on his/her food selection and activity requirements moving forward.
At the same time, the doctor can monitor these data to understand the progress in improving the patient has
Provide consistent service
Most chatbots industry may have several features such as information hub to emergency medical situations, setting appointments to specific doctors, or keeping up a live chat service even on non-working hours.
So, even if everyone is busy, or it’s the late hours with no experts available, inquirers will still have access to answering emergency first aid questions, and can set appointments for doctors, without needing a live person to handle it.
As you have seen, having chatbots in health industry can improve patient engagements and conversion in more realistic ways that keep patients satisfied and served.
Now let us look at the best Chatbots
7 Best Chatbots in Healthcare Industry for better patient Engagements
There are several chatbots out there with amazing functions. Each one has its own specialties which you can choose from depending on your service requirements.
**All of the chatbots referred here good to work on HIPPA compliant website
Progress NativeChat
Progress has been a pioneer in creating software for business automation and has created NativeChat, one of the best tools for AI chatbots in healthcare industry.
NativeChat is aimed at helping the booking system for doctors and inquiries at hospitals, but not using just simple predefined questions
It’s AI system creates a real conversational experience for users to get solution to their inquiries.
Here’s an example:
Its best features are:
- Natural Language Processing for over 72 languages.
- Collect required answers based on inquiry automatically
- Fully A.I. and machine learning integrated system
This tool lets you create your own health chatbot app or integrate it through Facebook or Whatsapp messenger. Checkout NativeChat now.
GYANT Chatbot Service
GYANT is one of the most popular chatbots in healthcare industry that can help you increase engagements with patients.
It is another one of the few chatbot services that are integrated with conversational AI in healthcare. GYANT lets you create a medical chatbot app for your medical center, and integrate it to your website or patient portal.
Its best feature is the pre and post-treatment outreach. The app can initiate notifications to check on patients who took past treatment from your medical center. Also, it can notify patients about the post-discharge treatment plans to aid recovery.
Some of its other features are:
- Maintain ROS based on HPI of patients
- Transfer to live consultation
- Chat automation integration on any website
Checkout GYANT now.
Appypie Chatbot
Appypie is one of the best tool to create chatbots in healthcare industry. This tool has almost everything you need to create a chatbot app in a few minutes that your patients can use to get assistance anytime.
The tool has a brilliant custom template builder with which you can use to create your own message and chatbot design templates.
Other features it has includes:
- Appointment Booking service
- Geo-location Targeted Chatbot service
- Live transfer integration
Appypie is ideal for healthcare services that provide online counseling or emergency first aid. It’s widely used to create chatbot for patients by healthcare service providers that are specialized in specific health issues, such as cancer specialists.
Checkout Appypie Healthcare Chatbot now.
Infermedica Symptom Checker
Infermedica is a simple medical chatbot that aims to stop wasting the doctor’s time with routine questions regarding symptoms.
Its A.I. integrated system allows actionable chat service to patients to identify the possible sickness of the patient.
If a patient reports to that chatbot that he/she is unwell, the bot will ask specific questions related to the possible sickness.
For example, let’s say someone states that he is having chest pain. The bot will find out possible illnesses that involve chest pain and will ask a few preliminary questions such as, “Is the pain towards the heart?”
It helps to create brilliant bots in the healthcare industry to pre-qualify a patient for the right doctors in large health centers or hospitals.
Its other features are:
- Multilingual Message service for around 19 languages
- Detailed reports and history on patient conversation
- Similar case detection to avoid repeat solution
Checkout Infermedica Symptom Checker now
Engati Healthcare Chatbots
It is one of the few complete solutions to healthcare industry.
Engati includes everything you need to automate your medical service and organize your healthcare patient handling, such as live chat natural language processing when handle random text inputs from patients, symptom checker to identify patients’ illness, appointment setting for doctors, etc.
One unique feature it offers is the medicine reminder for patients. Any patient who got treatment at your center, the doctor can integrate the prescription to the chatbot so that the patient is notified regularly to remind them to take medicine on time.
Some of its other features are:
- Daily health tips
- Nutrition assistance on inquiry
- Mental health counseling set up
Checkout Engati now.
VirtualSpirits
Virtual Spirits is a simple chatbot service that allows you to set up automated live chat handling for your medical center.
The software is super easy for both the medical service provider and the patients through brilliant medical service templates. You can initiate a question and answer chat service, or you can initiate A.I. bot so that any live chat you handle directly, the chatbot will keep track, and for future cases with similar questions, it will provide the solution without you needing to handle the live chat personally.
Plus, the support team will directly help you all the way, in creating your own patient engagement chatbot.
It’s exclusive features are:
- Integration with any CRM
- Integration to website and mobile friendly chatbot
- Full bot analytics to plan ahead about your medical center
Checkout VirtualSpirits healthcare chat bots now.
Agent Health
Agent health is one of the new tools for the chatbots industry, with amazing features that can outrank several widely used chatbots out there.
It’s main specialty is Machine Learning integrated with A.I. to improve your chatbot engagements with patients over time.
Agent Health lets you create an initial chatbot, and over time, it collects data from live chat sessions and followed-up answers from you based on customer questions you didn’t have answers for in the chatbot system earlier.
The tool itself is built and managed by medical experts who understand your needs and are prompt in providing you with support when required regarding your chatbot.
Its main features are:
- Integrate chatbot to website, mobile app and social media
- Full analytics on customer satisfaction and conversion
- Create personalized chat automation based on individual patients
Checkout Agent Health now.
How To Choose The Right one in Healthcare Industry?
The 7 bots referred here have their own sets of features but it choosing the right chatbot really depends on the type of healthcare service you provide. Here are a few healthcare chatbot use cases.
If you are an individual, running a small medical center with a specialized medical service, for example, retina specialist, then you will need a chatbot that will be more focused on collecting basic data and setting appointments. A simple question answers and booking system chatbot is a sufficient chatbot for doctors with such cases.
If you provide online counseling, then a more intuitive chatbot with A.I integration and symptom tracking is the best choice. You will no longer need to ask routine questions and plan your counseling with a more confident approach.
It’s best to a chatbot for hospitals that can integrate into CRMs or patient portals for accurate consultation and appointment setting.
For pharmaceuticals, you will need chatbots that provides analytics and can handle large sets of data.
There can be so many more purposes that you might wish to achieve with the chatbot you use. So it’s best to look into each of them and find out which one suits you best.
Final Thoughts
The latest technology should always be embraced. Hence it’s vital to use the proper patient engagement technology in industry.
Most of these top health chatbots offer demos. So you might as well take a demo and find out yourself, how useful these chatbots can prove to be, to improve patient engagements and conversion for your health care center.
Did you use any of the chatbots mention above or did you use a different one? Then please share your experience with us in the comments.
Also read a guide on how to generate medical leads
