Medical Chatbots with AI in Brief

Perfectly imitating human interaction, AI-powered medical chatbots can improve the quality and availability of care and patient engagement, drive healthcare and administrative staff productivity, facilitate disease self-management. AI chatbots often complement patient-centered medical software (e.g., telemedicine apps, patient portals) or solutions for physicians and nurses (e.g., EHR, hospital apps).

Essential Market Insights

The global healthcare chatbot market was estimated at $184.6 million in 2021. By 2028, it is forecasted to reach $431.47 million, growing at a CAGR of 15.20%. The rise in demand is supported by increased adoption of innovations, lack of patient engagement, and need to automate initial patient assessment.

Medical Chatbots, Explained

Architecture

The natural language processing module recognizes the essence of a person’s audio or text message (symptoms description, etc.) and transforms it into a structured request. Then, AI chatbot can:

Trigger the data retrieval (e.g., potential diagnoses, patient health records) from a knowledge base or an integrated app (e.g., EHR, CRM, HealthKit, Google Health).
Authorize the requested operation in the integrated app (e.g., schedule an appointment).
Turn to the recommendation engine to run ML algorithms (e.g., for personalized treatment adjustments).

To develop an AI-powered healthcare chatbot, ScienceSoft's software architects usually use the following core architecture and adjust it to the specifics of each project.

Architecture of Medical Chatbots for Healthcare- ScienceSoft


	ScienceSoft's tip: At the early stages of the project, you need to make sure that the chatbot can be easily integrated with the necessary systems, for instance, HIS, EHR, practice management system, RCM. It will facilitate activities like appointment scheduling, treatment validation, etc.

Use cases

According to Business Insider Intelligence, up to 73% of administrative tasks (e.g., pre-visit data collection) could be automated with AI. With the recent tech advancements, AI-based solutions proved to be effective for also for disease management and diagnostics. ScienceSoft's healthcare IT experts narrowed the list down to 5 prevalent use cases.

Symptoms checking

A chatbot checks patients' symptoms to identify if medical help is required. It also can connect a patient with a physician for a consultation and help medical staff monitor patients' state.

Value: Improved access to medical care, less misinformation.

Successful example: a virtual assistant using speech, text, images, and video for patient assessment.

Patient support in post-operative care and chronic disease management

A chatbot guides patients through recovery and helps them overcome the challenges of chronic diseases.

Value: 24/7 access to care support, handling non-standard questions due to the access to personal care plans and treatment protocols.

Successful example: a chatbot app for oncology patients.

Virtual assistants for medical staff

A chatbot can be a part of a doctor/nurse app helping the staff with treatment planning, adding patient records, calculating medication dosage, verifying prescribed drugs, and retrieving all the necessary patient information fast.

Value: Increased staff efficiency, improved treatment accuracy.

Therapy delivery

Often used for mental health and neurology, therapy chatbots offer support in treating disease symptoms (e.g., alleviating Tourette tics, coping with anxiety, dementia).

Value: Better access to care, addressing the shortage of medical professionals, overcoming social stigma.

Successful example: a chatbot offering cognitive-behavioral therapy.

General patient assistance

AI chatbots provide basic informational support to patients (e.g., offers information on visiting hours, address) and performs simple tasks like appointment scheduling, handling of prescription renewal requests.

Value: 24/7 assistance availability; decreased load on the call center; patient convenience.

Patient survey before/after the appointment

A friendly AI chatbot that helps collect necessary patient data (e.g., vitals, medical images, symptoms, allergies, chronic diseases) and post-visit feedback.

Value: routine tasks automation.

Alena Nikuliak

Senior Business Analyst and Healthcare IT Consultant at ScienceSoft

At ScienceSoft, we know that many healthcare providers doubt the reliability of medical chatbots when it comes to high-risk actions (therapy delivery, medication prescription, etc.). To avoid costly mistakes, we often opt for iterative development. With each iteration, the chatbot gets trained more thoroughly and receives more autonomy in its actions. For example, on the first stage, the chatbot only collects data (e.g., a prescription renewal request). After more training, the chatbot's scope of actions is expanded.

Features

With 100+ successful projects for healthcare, ScienceSoft shares AI chatbot functionality that has been in demand recently.

Speech recognition

Helps simplify the work of medical professionals and access to care for patients. Speech recognition functionality can be used to plan/adjust treatment, list symptoms, request information, etc.

Analytics of patient records and health data

Backed by sophisticated data analytics, AI chatbots can become a SaMD tool for treatment planning and disease management. A chatbot can help physicians ensure the medications' compatibility, plan the dosage, consider medication alternatives, suggest care adjustments, etc.

Human-like response generation

Using AI to imitate an actual conversation, medical chatbots will send personalized messages to users.

Patient monitoring

When aimed at disease management, AI chatbots can help monitor and assess symptoms and vitals (e.g., if connected to a wearable medical device or a smartwatch).

Notifications for patients and medical staff

A chatbot can send reminders like taking medication or measuring vitals to patients. In case of an emergency, a chatbot can send an alert to a doctor via an integrated physician app or EHR.

Patient data collection

To accelerate care delivery, a chatbot can collect required patient data (e.g., address, symptoms, insurance details) and keep this information in EHR.

Appointment scheduling

A chatbot helps select a doctor and choose a suitable date and time slot. After confirmation, the visit is scheduled in EHR.

Prescription refilling or renewal

Patients can request prescription refilling/renewal via a medical chatbot and receive electronic prescriptions (when verified by a physician).

Information sharing

Using the integrated databases and applications, a chatbot can answer patients’ questions on a healthcare organization’s schedule, health coverage, insurance claims statuses, etc.

How ScienceSoft Puts AI Chatbot Technology Into Practice

Development of a Patient Mobile App with an Integrated Medical Chatbot

A US-based care solutions provider got a patient mobile app integrated with a medical chatbot. The chatbot offered informational support, appointment scheduling, patient information collection, and assisted in the prescription refilling/renewal.

Project Details

Reimagine Healthcare with AI Chatbots

Having 18 years of experience in healthcare IT, ScienceSoft can start your AI chatbot project within a week, plan the chatbot and develop its first version within 2-4 months.

Go for development

Technologies Powering Medical Chatbots with AI

ScienceSoft's software engineers and data scientists prioritize the reliability and safety of medical chatbots and use the following technologies.

Front-end programming languages

Languages

JavaScript frameworks

Back-end programming languages

Mobile

Machine learning platforms and services

AWS

Azure

Google

Machine learning frameworks and libraries

Frameworks

Libraries

Bot platforms

Databases / data storages

SQL

NoSQL

Cloud databases, warehouses and storage

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud Platform

The Challenges Ahead and Ways to Solve Them

Taking the lead in AI projects since 1989, ScienceSoft's experienced teams identified challenges when developing medical chatbots and worked out the ways to resolve them. Check our recommendations to stay on the safe side.

#1 The accuracy of AI chatbots may affect patient outcomes.

Solution

Solution: To avoid possible chatbot malfunctioning, ScienceSoft follows the risk-based approach. We divide all AI chatbot actions into low-risk and high-risk groups. For high-risk tasks (e.g., medication prescription), we recommend allocating additional resources to AI training or adding physician verification.

#2 Medical chatbots access and handle huge data loads, making them a target for security threats.

Solution

Solution: ScienceSoft's engineers recommend employing measures like data anonymization, encryption, and user authentication mechanisms early on. Besides, throughout the project, we perform regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing of software and the development infrastructure.

#3 Users may be annoyed by the slow response from a medical chatbot.

Solution

Solution: It may occur if the chatbot searches through an extensive data set or is overloaded with requests. At ScienceSoft, we address this concern at the architecture design stage and plan a cloud-based architecture that will handle the anticipated amount of data and temporary request spikes.

How Much Will an AI Chatbot Cost You?

The cost range depends on the functionality in the first place. The investments start from $70,000 for a relatively simple solution (e.g., providing information support, online scheduling) to $250,000 for a complex AI chatbot (e.g., with advanced clinical decision support functionality).

Wondering how much it will cost in your specific case?

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Major cost factors of AI chatbots in healthcare

Development costs

Intended use and functionality of a chatbot.
The number of data sources to process, data quality.
ML algorithms' complexity and expected accuracy.
Compliance-associated costs (e.g., implementation of HIPAA security measures, FDA registration for healthcare chatbots with SaMD functionality).
UI requirements.
Required integrations (e.g., with EHR, third-party telehealth solutions, scheduling modules).

Operational costs

AI maintenance costs.
Infrastructure costs.

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About ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is an international software consulting and development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. With vast experience in medical IT since 2005, we help software product companies and healthcare providers leverage chatbots in their medical software development projects to enhance the patient experience, deliver verified information fast, and automate routine processes.