What Does Conversational AI in Healthcare Look Like?

AI-powered virtual assistants have gained significant traction in terms of use over the past couple of years. They are taking their place in the healthcare industry and paving the way for remote healthcare. These intelligent assistants are helping to alleviate some of the burden placed on healthcare providers in multiple fields and encourage patients to take agency over their health and healthcare responsibilities. 

There are various scenarios where a virtual AI assistant or conversational AI bot could assist physicians, nurses, patients, or their families/caregivers. Improved organization of patient pathways, medication management, support in emergencies or with first aid, and offering a solution for more superficial medical issues - are all possible scenarios for chatbots to assist and ease the burden on medical professionals. Below, we take a deep dive into how conversational AI assistants work within the healthcare industry and what they look like.

1. Intelligent Healthcare Assistants Are Performing Dynamic Medical Triage Services

One of the most significant costs of outpatient healthcare organizations occurs when human resources are tied up with patients experiencing minor health concerns, which could usually be treated remotely or with over-the-counter medication or treatments. In this situation, intelligent virtual assistants can make a major difference in terms of time and money. They allow both the healthcare provider and patient to interact remotely, through mobile applications or directly through the provider's website, and enable the patient to go over all symptoms to predict a potential diagnosis-virtually.

With this technological intelligence, a virtual AI assistant presents the ability to deliver triage services remotely, analyze images (understanding and matching), perform medical triage, and symptom collection. These virtual assistants can be trained increasingly with more complex information and make decisions faster than human employees. In this way, they can ease some of the pressure experienced by medical professionals and quickly solve health management concerns. 

Additionally, these intelligent virtual AI assistants can recommend specialists upon triage of symptoms and save valuable time during the initial consultation with the aid of a pre-consultation questionnaire. This pre-screening measure has proven to be beneficial since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has helped prioritize the safety of both the patients and healthcare providers before an in-person visit occurs.

This solution can be customized to enhance the experience of chronic patients who regularly need healthcare support or better prepare patients for upcoming medical interventions by delivering necessary information and keeping loved ones updated live as a procedure occurs and is over.

2. Conversational AI Assistants are Reinventing Patient Onboarding and Updating Patient Data Through Conversations

Digital-first customers expect fast and straightforward engagements, especially regarding their well-being or healthcare needs. Although most aspects of the healthcare industry are highly regulated, this does not create an excuse for a poor customer experience.

Conversational AI assistants are efficient and scalable. They can create this incredible omnichannel onboarding experience while maintaining HIPAA/HL7 standards and guaranteeing the confidentiality of personal information pertaining to one's healthcare. Leveraging AI-powered technologies empowers your organization to deliver a seamless onboarding experience to patients and caregivers.

Conversational AI agents can update existing patient information and upload new patient information. They can extract patient information to quickly answer questions about their name, address, phone number, symptoms, PCP, insurance policies, and other vital information. Conversational AI assistants are automatic, intuitive, and seamless and greatly facilitate patient admissions, enhance symptom tracking, improve doctor-patient interactions, and ensure accurate medical record keeping.

3. Leveraging Conversational AI Allows the Freedom to Schedule and Manage Medical Appointments Easily

Conversational AI bots are harmoniously integrated into the existing system of the healthcare organization and automatically work to extract necessary information about the physicians, available time slots, clinic or office locations, or even the pharmacy schedule to intelligently manage the bookings, changes, or cancellations pertaining to medical appointments. The virtual assistant engages in a friendly conversation with the patient and asks about their health condition and other key inquisitions. The assistant can recommend the appropriate match for an appointment and can even enable automatic appointment reminders or updates to the patient.

4. AI Virtual Assistants are Helping to Create a New Level of Customer Service and Patient Self-Service

Customers want instant or on-demand access to customer services and information for most industries. Due to this growing need, conversational AI bots are replacing traditional customer service centers with often lengthy call queues. The healthcare industry is no exception to this trend.

Investing in conversational AI agents makes it easy for patients to connect with their healthcare provider or insurance company from anywhere or at any time. They can easily schedule appointments, find clinic locations, or receive assistance choosing the most relevant doctor to their needs. From the healthcare industry's side, investing in virtual AI assistants minimizes operational costs without compromising customer service quality.

Additionally, these conversational AI assistants allow customers to receive answers to FAQs on medical test preparation, clinic schedules, availability, services and cost of service, special procedures, and even clinician profiles, all without losing sight of health-related compliance standards. These intelligent bots can even assess patient Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) and recommend individualized wellness-related tips and guidance on medications (including side effects, diet restrictions, dosage, and interactions).

5. Conversational AI Helps to Streamline Administrative Tasks. 

AI virtual assistants can also significantly differentiate allocating administrative tasks (like billing and collections). Adding a conversational AI layer on top of your internal finance systems assists your administrative team, providers, and insurance companies in managing the entire invoicing process. Conversational AI automates and creates a flow that allocates tasks for back-office personnel and triggers RPA bots to notify the appropriate people; this reduces human error, speeds up processes, and optimizes cash flow. Moreover, patients have increased or complete visibility of treatment costs and can enable automatic payment reminders.

6. AI Enables Access to a 360° View of EMR Data as Simple as Asking a Question

Modern customers expect 24/7 access to personalized, individual information. However, offering this experience can be costly if you cover it with human teams. Choosing to invest in conversational AI for your organization can prove beneficial in terms of cost, enhancing customer experience, increasing availability of services, medical procedure preparation, and much more! Leveraging RPA processes help to seamlessly integrate healthcare data from various "back-end" systems and deliver a 360° view of a patient's EMR. This investment brings considerable benefits for both the internal teams and the patient, and all parties are happier with this simplified experience.

7. Conversational AI Assistants Help to Deliver Better Decisions, Faster!

Many healthcare organizations struggle with internal complexity, complicated organizational structures, slowed down internal processes, and an inability for teams to collaborate and get vital work completed. Integrating modern technology can be critical in ensuring that meaningful, dynamic collaboration is taking place and improving work processes while keeping context in check, rebalancing user experience, and supporting overall workplace productivity.

Consequently, every individual business must focus singularly on enhancing and simplifying workflows, especially at the senior level, where the value-added they can bring directly impacts the overall healthcare business performance. 

AI virtual assistants utilize advanced self-learning capabilities to function far beyond the predetermined Q&As and polish-up various concurrent IT systems to help deliver necessary information faster and more efficiently. Thus, managers benefit from providing simple, straightforward, and intelligent responses that can lead to significant time savings each day. Synchronously, AI virtual assistants can automate "back-office" booking meetings or appointments for managers or providers without human intervention, thus, saving time and money.

Additionally, these bots can be used directly by practitioners to generate health records, craft reports during an examination or consultation, and increase the quality of healthcare service. Virtual assistants can help physicians take care of tedious tasks like filling out medical documents, writing prescriptions or refilling them, crafting referral letters, writing up a summary of visits, and more in daily medical practices. Thus practitioners can gain more time to create a quality engagement with patients and personalize the healthcare experience thanks to modern technology like conversational AI.

Find out how DRUID AI can benefit your healthcare business in this case study.