Paging Dr. Bot
Technology such as chatbots is now being employed to make healthcare more accessible with a user-friendly and personalized approach. Healthcare providers appreciate the efficiency of these new methods as well, with many of the solutions leveraging advanced AI. As an example, the radiology team at UCLA is employing chatbots as interventional radiologist assistants that answer questions about what types of tests or x-ray contrasts to do.
For members of the team on this project, this step is just the beginning, as they envision bots as having a pretty wide role in medical specialties. According to an article published in Radiology Today, Kevin Seals, MD, a resident physician in radiology at UCLA, notes “we’ve created a kind of foundational technology that can be used to create any sort of medical subspecialist chatbot.” HIT Consultant, meanwhile, highlights healthcare uses, ranging from prescription refills to interactive patient journaling for psychiatry to ongoing patient outreach.
Global Market Insights estimates the virtual health assistant market is expected to exceed $1.5 billion by 2024. Concerns persist, however, especially around HIPAA compliance and personal data exchange. Recently, my colleague wrote about the need for audits of interactions, and noted these HIPAA regulations as one factor. In addition to regulatory compliance, decisions that can impact a diagnosis need to be tracked both to help developers and doctors understand what is working well with the bots they leverage, as well as what decisions may result in a recommendation differing from what a live medical doctor might have proposed.
With BotChain, developers of healthcare service bots as well as healthcare providers can take advantage of a transparent and immutable records that provide an audit trail of bot interaction and communication, as well as real time insights into what agents are doing.
Just what the doctor ordered to alleviate anxiety around adopting some of the latest advances in e-healthcare.
