The Development and Use of Chatbots in Public Health: Scoping Review PMC

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chatbot in healthcare

Since medical chatbots learn from the training data they were given, the projections of this data can lead to inequalities and inaccuracies. Therefore, the biggest challenge that healthcare chatbot developers face is ensuring the accuracy of responses. With all the benefits of AI-powered chatbots in healthcare, there are bound to be some downfalls. The biggest disadvantage of chatbots in healthcare are the potential biases in their responses. Although there is no human error here, there can still be discrepancies that lead to misdiagnoses.

When physicians observe a patient presenting with specific signs and symptoms, they assess the subjective probability of the diagnosis. Such probabilities have been called diagnostic probabilities (Wulff et al. 1986), a form of epistemic probability. In practice, however, clinicians make diagnoses in a more complex manner, which they are rarely able to analyse logically (Banerjee et al. 2009). Unlike artificial systems, experienced doctors recognise the fact that diagnoses and prognoses are always marked by varying degrees of uncertainty. They are aware that some diagnoses may turn out to be wrong or that some of their treatments may not lead to the cures expected. Thus, medical diagnosis and decision-making require ‘prudence’, that is, ‘a mode of reasoning about contingent matters in order to select the best course of action’ (Hariman 2003, p. 5).

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The division of task-oriented and social chatbots requires additional elements to show the relation among users, experts (professionals) and chatbots. Most chatbot cases—at least task-oriented chatbots—seem to be user facing, that is, they are like a ‘gateway’ between the patient and the HCP. The most famous chatbots currently in use are Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Cordana and XiaoIce. Two of the most popular chatbots used in health care are the mental health assistant Woebot and Omaolo, which is used in Finland.

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Issues of data privacy and the potential for chatbots to generate false information underscore the need for a careful approach when deploying chatbots into healthcare. Early negative experiences with medical chatbots could damage trust, limiting the public’s willingness to engage. Engaging in open conversations about health with medical professionals can be challenging for individuals who anticipate encountering stigma or embarrassment upon revealing their symptoms and experiences of health. This predicament can lead to missed opportunities for early treatment, ultimately impacting overall health and well-being. By facilitating preliminary conversations about embarrassing and stigmatized symptoms, medical chatbots can play a pivotal role in influencing whether or not someone seeks medical guidance. No included studies reported direct observation (in the laboratory or in situ; eg, ethnography) or in-depth interviews as evaluation methods.

chatbot in healthcare

However, there is no machine substitute for higher-level interactions, critical thinking, and ambiguity [93]. Chatbots create added complexity that must be identified, addressed, and mitigated before their universal adoption in health care. We identified 78 healthbot apps commercially available on the Google Play and Apple iOS stores.

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The first step is to create an NLU training file that contains various user inputs mapped with the appropriate intents and entities. The more data is included in the training file, the more “intelligent” the bot will be, and the more positive customer experience it’ll provide. For example, it may be almost impossible for a healthcare chat bot to give an accurate diagnosis based on symptoms for complex conditions.

chatbot in healthcare

Continual algorithm training and updates would be necessary because of the constant improvements in current standards of care. Further refinements and testing for the accuracy of algorithms are required before clinical implementation [71]. This area holds tremendous potential, as an estimated ≥50% of all patients with cancer have used radiotherapy during the course of their treatment.

The ability to analyze large volumes of survey responses allows healthcare organizations to identify trends, make informed decisions, and implement targeted interventions for continuous improvement. One of the key advantages of using chatbots in healthcare is their ability to automate time-consuming administrative tasks. For instance, they can handle insurance verification and claims processing seamlessly, eliminating the need for hospital staff to manually navigate through complex paperwork. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. By streamlining these processes, chatbots save valuable time and resources for both patients and healthcare organizations.

  • Creating chatbots with prespecified answers is simple; however, the problem becomes more complex when answers are open.
  • Although efforts have been made to address these concerns, current guidelines and policies are still far behind the rapid technological advances [94].
  • Similarly, conversations between men and machines are not nearly judged by the outcome but by the ease of the interaction.
  • As healthcare becomes increasingly complex, patients have more and more questions about their care, from understanding medical bills to managing chronic conditions.
  • This sophistication, drawing upon recent advancements in large language models (LLMs), has led to increased customer satisfaction and more versatile chatbot applications.

This safeguard includes designating people, either by job title or job description, who are authorized to access this data, as well as electronic access control systems, video monitoring, and door locks restricting access to the data. These safeguards include all the security policies you have put in place in your company, including designating a privacy official, to guide the use, storage, and transfer of patient data, and also to prevent, detect, and correct any security violations. Rasa offers a transparent system of handling and storing patient data since the software developers at Rasa do not have access to the PHI.

One critical insight the healthcare industry has learned through the COVID-19 pandemic is that medical resources are finite. By leveraging watsonx Assistant AI healthcare chatbots, you intelligently focus the attention of skilled medical professionals while empowering patients to quickly help themselves with simple inquiries. Happier patients, improved patient outcomes, and less stressful healthcare experiences, fueled by the global leader in conversational AI. The emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic has significantly advanced the development of telehealth and the utilisation of health-oriented chatbots in the diagnosis and treatment of coronavirus infection (AlgorithmWatch 2020; McGreevey et al. 2020). COVID-19 screening is considered an ideal application for chatbots because it is a well-structured process that involves asking patients a series of clearly defined questions and determining a risk score (Dennis et al. 2020). For instance, in California, the Occupational Health Services did not have the resources to begin performing thousands of round-the-clock symptom screenings at multiple clinical sites across the state (Judson et al. 2020).

A healthcare chatbot also sends out gentle reminders to patients for the consumption of medicines at the right time when requested by the doctor or the patient. According to an MGMA Stat poll, about 49% of medical groups said that the rates of ‘no-shows‘ soared since 2021. No-show appointments result in a considerable loss of revenue and underutilize the physician’s time.

These medical chatbot serve as intuitive platforms, empowering individuals to access information, schedule appointments, and address health queries with ease. In conclusion, the evolution of chatbots into sophisticated query tools has the potential to transform the healthcare industry. They are now becoming capable of providing personalized care and assistance to patients, handling even the most complex inquiries. As chatbots continue to evolve, healthcare professionals and technology companies should consider the ethical implications of AI and ensure that patient privacy remains a top priority. Ultimately, chatbots have the potential to revolutionize healthcare, providing patients with the personalized healthcare services they deserve. With these advancements, chatbots in healthcare are shifting from simple customer service tools to sophisticated query tools.

This includes details about medical history, treatments, medications, and any other relevant data. With chatbots handling documentation tasks, physicians can focus more on patient care and treatment plans without worrying about missing critical information. Moreover, chatbots simplify appointment scheduling by allowing patients to book appointments online or through messaging platforms. This not only reduces administrative overhead but also ensures that physicians’ schedules are optimized efficiently. As a result, hospitals can maximize their resources by effectively managing patient flow while reducing waiting times. In the realm of post-operative care, AI chatbots help enhance overall recovery processes by using AI technology to facilitate remote monitoring of patients’ vital signs.

The CancerChatbot by CSource is an artificial intelligence healthcare chatbot system for serving info on cancer, cancer treatments, prognosis, and related topics. This chatbot provides users with up-to-date information on cancer-related topics, running users’ questions against a large dataset of cancer cases, research data, chatbot in healthcare and clinical trials. With the eHealth chatbot, users submit their symptoms, and the app runs them against a database of thousands of conditions that fit the mold. This is followed by the display of possible diagnoses and the steps the user should take to address the issue – just like a patient symptom tracking tool.

Top 3 Healthcare Chatbots

Almost half of the physicians also stated that they would be likely to prescribe the use of the technology to patients and recommend it to their colleagues. About half of the physicians also agreed that chatbots would benefit the physical, psychological, and behavioral health outcomes of patients, such as diet improvement, medication adherence, exercise frequency, or stress reduction. The other half of physicians was roughly equally divided between being an opponent or having a neutral opinion to the perceived importance and benefits of health care chatbots. In conclusion, embracing the use of chatbots in healthcare holds immense promise for transforming how medical services are delivered. As technology continues to advance, these virtual assistants will play an increasingly significant role in improving patient outcomes and revolutionizing the healthcare landscape. Implementing advanced technologies often comes with significant costs; however, chatbot solutions offer an affordable option for healthcare organizations looking to enhance patient care without straining their budgets excessively.

Dialogue management is the high-level design of how the healthbot will maintain the entire conversation while the dialogue interaction method is the way in which the user interacts with the system. While these choices are often tied together, e.g., finite-state and fixed input, we do see examples of finite-state dialogue management with the semantic parser interaction method. Ninety-six percent of apps employed a finite-state conversational design, indicating that users are taken through a flow of predetermined steps then provided with a response. The majority (83%) had a fixed-input dialogue interaction method, indicating that the healthbot led the conversation flow. This was typically done by providing “button-push” options for user-indicated responses.

Chatbot technology in healthcare is undergoing advancements on a daily basis, and we’re excited to see the importance of chatbots in healthcare changes as we develop new technologies. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, these chatbots are meant to assist healthcare providers – not replace them altogether. At the end of the day, human oversight is required to minimize the risk of inaccurate diagnoses and more. With all the disadvantages of chatbots in healthcare, it’s crucial to look at the good side as well.

Among all 284 questions asked across the two chatbox platforms, the median accuracy score was 5.5, and the median completeness score was 3.0, suggesting the chatbox format is a potentially powerful tool given its prowess. To further cement their findings, the researchers asked the GPT-4 another 60 questions related to ten common medical conditions. In 1999, I defined regenerative medicine as the collection of interventions that restore to normal function tissues and organs that have been damaged by disease, injured by trauma, or worn by time. I include a full spectrum of chemical, gene, and protein-based medicines, cell-based therapies, and biomechanical interventions that achieve that goal. Also, if the chatbot has to answer a flood of questions, it may be confused and start to give garbled answers.

The technology helps clinicians categorize patients depending on how severe their conditions are. A medical bot assesses users through questions to define patients who require urgent treatment. It then guides those with the most severe symptoms to seek responsible doctors or medical specialists.

  • Chatbots in healthcare also provide personalized reminders and address common inquiries, enhancing the patient experience and reducing administrative burden.
  • These intelligent bots can instantly check doctors’ availability in real-time before confirming appointments.
  • Additionally, focus areas including anesthesiology, cancer, cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, genetics, medical claims, neurology, nutrition, pathology, and sexual health were assessed.

Moreover, chatbot interfaces provide patients with the flexibility to reschedule or cancel appointments effortlessly. With just a few clicks or taps, individuals can modify their appointment timing according to their needs or unexpected circumstances. This feature not only empowers patients but also reduces the burden on healthcare staff who would otherwise need to handle these requests manually. Chatbots are well equipped to help patients get their healthcare insurance claims approved speedily and without hassle since they have been with the patient throughout the illness.

In this article, we will explore how chatbots in healthcare can improve patient engagement and experience and streamline internal and external support. Any advantage of a chatbot can be a disadvantage if the wrong platform, programming, or data are used. Many rely on rule-based systems that automate tasks and provide predefined responses to customer inquiries. Conversational AI chatbots can remember conversations with users and incorporate this context into their interactions. When combined with automation capabilities including robotic process automation (RPA), users can accomplish complex tasks through the chatbot experience.

Comprehending the obstacles encountered by healthcare providers and patients is crucial for customizing the functionalities of the chatbot. This stage guarantees that the medical chatbot solves practical problems and improves the patient experience. In recent years, the healthcare landscape has witnessed a transformative integration of technology, with medical chatbots at the forefront of this evolution. Medical chatbots also referred to as health bots or medical AI chatbots, have become instrumental in reshaping patient engagement and accessibility within the healthcare industry. Chatbots, also known as conversational agents, interactive agents, virtual agents, virtual humans, or virtual assistants, are computer software applications that run automated tasks or scripts designed to simulate human conversation. Chatbots are artificial intelligence (AI) programs that can generate and retrieve information for the interaction with human users via text or computer voice generation.

In addition, especially in health care, these systems have been based on theoretical and practical models and methods developed in the field. For example, in the field of psychology, so-called ‘script theory’ provided a formal framework for knowledge (Fischer and Lam 2016). Thus, as a formal model that was already in use, it was relatively easy to turn it into algorithmic form. These expert systems were part of the automated decision-making (ADM) process, that is, a process completely devoid of human involvement, which makes final decisions on the basis of the data it receives (European Commission 2018, p. 20). Conversely, health consultation chatbots are partially automated proactive decision-making agents that guide the actions of healthcare personnel.

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We have yet to find a chatbot that incorporates deep learning to process large and complex data sets at a cellular level. Although not able to directly converse with users, DeepTarget [64] and deepMirGene [65] are capable of performing miRNA and target predictions using expression data with higher accuracy compared with non–deep learning models. With the advent of phenotype–genotype predictions, chatbots for genetic screening would greatly benefit from image recognition.

These rudimentary chatbots were designed to handle simple tasks such as scheduling doctor’s appointments, providing general health information, medical history or reminding patients about medication schedules. Chatbots are computer programs that present a conversation-like interface through which people can access information and services. The COVID-19 pandemic has driven a substantial increase in the use of chatbots to support and complement traditional health care systems. However, despite the uptake in their use, evidence to support the development and deployment of chatbots in public health remains limited. Recent reviews have focused on the use of chatbots during the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of conversational agents in health care more generally. This paper complements this research and addresses a gap in the literature by assessing the breadth and scope of research evidence for the use of chatbots across the domain of public health.

A total of 100 practicing GPs participated in an online research survey that examined their perceived benefits, challenges, and risks of using chatbots in health care. Overall, the findings demonstrated that physicians have a wide variety of perspectives on the use of health care chatbots for patients, with few major skews to one side or the other regarding agreement levels to a variety of characteristics. Almost half of the physicians perceived health care chatbots to be important for patients, especially for helping patients better manage their own health.

chatbot in healthcare

Providers can overcome this challenge by providing staff education and training and demonstrating the benefits of chatbots in improving patient outcomes and reducing workload. Over time, chatbot algorithms became capable of more complex rules-based programming and even natural language processing, enabling customer queries to be expressed in a conversational way. This gave rise to a new type of chatbot, contextually aware and armed with machine learning to continuously optimize its ability to correctly process and predict queries through exposure to more and more human language. To get the most from an organization’s existing data, enterprise-grade chatbots can be integrated with critical systems and orchestrate workflows inside and outside of a CRM system. Chatbots can handle real-time actions as routine as a password change, all the way through a complex multi-step workflow spanning multiple applications.

chatbot in healthcare

These capabilities make AI chatbots an indispensable tool for modern healthcare management, revolutionizing appointment scheduling. Patient preferences may vary, but many individuals appreciate the convenience and immediacy offered by healthcare chatbots. However, it is important to maintain a balance between automated assistance and human interaction for more complex medical situations. Long wait times at hospitals or clinics can be frustrating for patients seeking immediate medical attention. With the implementation of chatbot solutions, these delays can be significantly reduced. Chatbots offer round-the-clock support and instant responses to queries, enabling patients to receive necessary guidance without enduring lengthy waiting periods.

The advantages of chatbots in healthcare are enormous – and all stakeholders share the benefits. With the vast number of algorithms, tools, and platforms available, understanding the different types and end purposes of these chatbots will assist developers in choosing the optimal tools when designing them to fit the specific needs of users. These categories are not exclusive, as chatbots may possess multiple characteristics, making the process more variable. Textbox 1 describes some examples of the recommended apps for each type of chatbot but are not limited to the ones specified.

For the most part, these results indicated an almost equal number of supporters for health care chatbots, with the rest being those who are either indifferent or opponents to the technology. In terms of specific health-related outcomes of chatbot use for patients, an average of 45% (45/100) of physicians believed in some type of physical, psychological, or behavioral health benefit to patients (Table 3). More than half of physicians believed that health care chatbots could improve nutrition or diet (65%, 65/100), enhance medication or treatment adherence (60%, 60/100), increase activity or exercise (55%, 55/100), or reduce stress (51%, 51/100). Invitees were sent an email inviting them to complete the survey, accessible via an embedded Web link. The only inclusion criteria included being a GP with an MD degree within the United States; no restrictions on age, gender, or previous use of chatbots were implemented.

They employ algorithms that automatically learn from past interactions how best to answer questions and improve conversation flow routing. Experts who understand the difference between a search engine’s capabilities and the tasks at which generative AI models excel predict the latter will not replace the former. Towards Healthcare is a leading global provider of technological solutions, clinical research services, and advanced analytics to the healthcare sector, committed to forming creative connections that result in actionable insights and innovations.

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