A Short Guide on How Chatbots are Influencing the Healthcare Sector!

A Short Guide on How Chatbots are Influencing the Healthcare Sector!
Healthcare app development company
According to the market forecast of AIMultiple, an emerging portal that performs transparent and data-driven research on technologies like AI, IoT, RPA, etc., the AI and chatbot industry is booming. Their reports depict the following estimations:
  • Chatbots save about $0.70 per interaction
  • The global chatbot market may reach $1.3 Billion by the year 2025
  • Almost 50% of large-scale companies are thinking of investing in the chatbots
It is evident from these numbers that machine learning and AI-based chatbots are becoming a new craze in the industrial world.
The healthcare sector too has leveraged this technology. In 2021, the healthcare chatbots have proved all the more beneficial as remote patient treatment was in high demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic. So, needless to say, this breakthrough technology is going to transform the healthcare sector in myriad ways.

Vital Role of Smart Chatbots in Healthcare Solutions and Services

So, what exactly is a chatbot? Well, it is a kind of web-robotic application that runs on machine learning algorithms; which fall under artificial intelligence. A chatbot possesses human-like conversational skills and is designed to run automated commands while interacting online.
In the healthcare industry, these super-responsive AI-enabled chatbots are mostly used as a conversationalist or a healthcare consultant for providing accurate information instantly. They facilitate seamless interactions between patients and doctors or other care providers. A few top-notch examples of healthcare bots are Sensely, Babylon, ABBI, SafeDrugBot, Ada, Florence, etc.
Furthermore, these bots can enhance the accuracy of ailment identification and symptom detection, and also help to assist in preventive care, feedback processes, post-recovery guidance, etc. They help to perform mundane tasks like sending emails, providing simple solutions, lead generation, marketing, result analysis, etc. So, as these chatbots can handle simple tasks, the healthcare staff and medical professionals can focus on more important tasks. Owing to this, healthcare app development agencies across the globe have gradually started to architect innovative and smart chatbots.

Major Categories of Healthcare Chatbots in the Market

Information-Oriented Bots
These bots aim towards answering the queries of the patient by providing apt information and keeping the conversations simple, creative and non-repetitive.
Task-Oriented Bots
These bots are meant to guide the health workers in providing virtual health check-ups to the patients and also schedule timely appointments.
Open/Close Domain Bots
As the name suggests, these are domain-specific bots that provide detailed data of the diseases, their symptoms, and related health issues to the patients.
These were major categories in which the bots are divided. Based on these, there are diverse bots designed in the market, such as healthcare appointment selector bots, bots for patient treatment feedback, bots for dental clinics, bots providing coupon promotions for therapists, bots providing sex education, fitness assistance bots, health insurance bots, and FAQ chatbots.

Practical Benefits of AI Chatbots in the Healthcare Sector

Healthcare Solutions
Answering FAQs and Providing Relevant Information
Usually, most of the patients keep asking the same repeated and basic questions to the healthcare facilities on their websites or applications. In this case, intelligent chatbots can prove extremely beneficial. Bots have aptly programmed responses and they address the frequently asked questions instantly with much accurate information, even though the questions are related to a wide range of health conditions.
Customer Service for Enhanced Patient Engagement
Bots act as a tool that facilitates instant and continuous interaction with patients. This can drastically improve patient satisfaction as well as retention. The concerns of patients are resolved immediately which boosts engagement and builds trust in them.
Scheduling Appointments
Bots can help the patients to book appointments easily and also assign a particular doctor to them. They can send a confirmation email to the doctor and book an available slot as per the availability of both parties. This way scheduling online appointments becomes an effortless task with bots.
Primary Patient Care and Assistance
Nowadays, any type of information is just a click away. But the drawback of this facility is that people can easily get access to misleading or incorrect health information. This may lead to severe health conditions too. However, carefully designed chatbots can be utilized to provide the right information when it comes to primary patient care and also emergency first aid.
Detection of Symptoms and Ailment
A chatbot helps in the detection of ailments that patients have by asking some simple questions related to the ailments and analyzing the patient’s health history. Thus, patients can use bots for identifying certain ailments and measure the severity of their health conditions using bots.
Claims and Coverage
In case the patients want to file for claims, the bot can check their existing coverage, track the status of a claim, it will easily provide them the relevant information they require. Besides, doctors too get seamless access to patient data and their queries. So they can proactively authorize billing payments and related requests that patients or healthcare authorities may ask.
Latest updates about the Drugs to Medical professionals
There are high chances that medical professionals can miss out on information of the latest drugs or researches made. These updates can be crucial for treating patients. In this case, bots can be used for dispensing the right and updated information of the drugs to those medical professionals.
Research and Suggestive Treatment
Chatbots can be highly beneficial when it comes to research and suggestive treatment. They have already made some contributions in areas like telemedicine, health records, radiology, imaging, etc.

Concluding Words:

Gradually, AI chatbots are becoming a new normal in the healthcare domain. They are not only flawlessly communicating with the patients or the end-users but also digitalizing a host of other functionalities in the healthcare organizations. These chatbots are highly intelligent and with some human assistance, they can empower several small and large healthcare centers to operate seamlessly and improvise their functioning to a great extent. No wonder why every existing healthcare app development company is on the verge of designing smart chatbots to meet the expectations of this highly competitive market.
Hopefully, this blog has given you insights into how healthcare chatbots have influenced the healthcare industry.
Do comment below or get in touch, for any further details on this topic.

The Future Visions of Healthcare in Home Sector: Top Trends for Startups to Employ!

The Future Visions of Healthcare in Home Sector: Top Trends for Startups to Employ!
Healthcare app development services
It is interesting to watch how the healthcare sector has evolved over the years. In the 1950s, physicians and doctors would make calls to the patients for delivering the best possible healthcare services to them. And today, in the year 2021, this trend seems to have returned where the doctors and physicians are reaching out to the patients, for providing them the best patient experience.
Moreover, the home care providing industry is growing leaps and bounds in the United States. The top reasons behind the revenue growth of this industry are the aging population in the US, rising acceptance of home care, the prevalence of chronic health conditions, technological advancements, etc. Home care also saves a lot of costs as compared to hospital care treatment. Needless to say, the future of the healthcare sector is going to be much more patient-oriented and going to save much more lives than ever.
Here are some predictions by Deloitte, on how will the future of healthcare look like in the coming years.
  • Healthcare practices will start shifting from treating illnesses to prevention and patient well-being.
  • Patient engagement and their empowerment will give them a sense of ownership of their health.
  • Interoperable data and related platforms will allow vital medical data to flow freely yet securely for insightful decision-making.
These predictions depict that technology is going to advance the healthcare systems in myriad ways. Besides, startups and healthcare app development agencies will accordingly design their healthcare products. New trends will come into the picture and these startups and development services will have to accustom to those trends. So, let’s have a glimpse at some of such future-oriented trends.

The Future Visions of Healthcare Sector: Top Trends for Startups to Observe

Aging Patients and Home Care
According to a survey, 3 out of 4 adults of the age 50 or above would want to stay at their homes and with people of their community. As per another survey, almost 10,000 Baby Boomers are crossing the age mark of 65 years in the US; Baby Boomers are those people born between the years 1946 to 1964 and they have a considerable impact on the US economy. Besides, the number of people aged above 65 years will cross 18% of the total population, by the year 2030.
So, it is estimated that home care will be in high demand in the future. To support this statement, there is another report which predicts that by 2024, the U.S. home care market could cross $225 Billion, which was $100 Billion in the year 2016. So altogether, this is a great time for budding entrepreneurs and startups to leverage this opportunity to design apt on-demand health care app development solutions that can bridge this health care gap to offer superior medical services.
Doctors Connecting with Patients
This is the era of serving the consumers on-demand at their desired location. This holds true for the healthcare sector too. Doctors connecting to the patients and taking house calls is going to be the new norm and it is going to be the future of all kinds of healthcare entities.
There already have been some medical applications in the market that offer features like audio/video calling and digital monitoring services. MeetYourDoc is one such telemedicine app. It allows patients and doctors to connect through video sessions for remote treatments.
Also, there are some other applications that are trying to bring at-home care to several patients. Phlex65 is one of the best HIPAA compliant apps meant for both- aged people and care providers. Older people can hire at-home care providers from nearby areas through Phlex65.
Telemedicine and its Convenience
Telemedicine facilitates patient monitoring using a smartphone or tablet or PC and helps the patients get medical help without moving to a hospital or a clinic. Telemedicine is a technology-driven approach that is serving millions of patients, especially in rural areas where there is a scarcity of medical facilities. Not only rural patients but owing to the current pandemic situation, even urban patients have started preferring telemedicine facilities. With just a click of a button, patients can avail these services and avoid long wait times in hospitals, or get rid of the traveling time and cost. So, the telemedicine industry, too, is growing at a rapid pace and every healthcare app development company in USA must consider this as an opportunity to grow their business.

Final Thoughts

Future visions of the healthcare domain clearly notify that ‘personalized treatment’ and ‘remote care’ are going to be the new normal, and to some extent, they have already been implemented by many care providers. With the advent of digital healthcare technologies, a plethora of mHealth apps and healthcare management systems have been designed to deliver the best-in-class patient experience and provide personalized services to them.
Furthermore, these healthcare systems and services drive actionable insights into the health conditions of patients, improve communication between patients and doctors, and provide the patients all the information about their health. So, it is essential for the startups to keep a keen watch on all such trends and accordingly design their healthcare products or offer healthcare app development services.
That’s it in this post. Hope it provided you with some thoughtful trends and ideas.
If you want more details on how this sector is advancing, reach out to us. Our professionals will assist you on this, and also guide you if you are looking forward to creating such medical apps or systems.