Will medical chatbots replace real doctors? Not so fast.
For over a decade robots have been replacing jobs previously performed exclusively by humans, from manufacturing cars to filling warehouse orders. As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning continue to help evolve and perfect their interpersonal communication skills, AI-based chatbots will become more commonplace in healthcare. In the near future, instead of consulting a doctor for a diagnosis, you might just interface with an AI chatbot in a mobile app.
Mobile apps like Your.Md already incorporate chatbots and AI to help consumers find local specialists, ask health-related questions and even check their symptoms. Earlier this year, the UK’s National Health Service launched a trial with Babylon Health, a startup developing an AI chatbot.
But will chatbots become intelligent enough to replace real doctors? Given the fact that every person is unique, some medical conditions are atypical and that bots can’t communicate effectively (at least not yet), the answer for now is no.
Some of the challenges to AI/Chatbot adoption
1) Communication: People describe their symptoms based on their own personalities and frame of reference. Human intuition will continue to play a vital role in making diagnoses. Chatbots will need to have the right level of personality, sentiment and ability to understand context.
2) Trust: How comfortable would you be following healthcare instructions from an algorithm, even if the initial set-up was approved by general practitioners? Similarly, healthcare organizations will also need to become comfortable trusting the technology to determine best practices for incorporating chatbots in the delivery of services to patients.
3) Regulations: In addition to following the usual privacy and security rules, the AI knowledge base and learning algorithms of a chatbot would need to be designed to ensure new information derived from patient interactions are compliant with ethical medical practices.
Best uses for healthcare chatbots right now
Due to the limited capabilities of AI, the best uses for chatbots right now are in patient engagement such as appointment scheduling, remote patient monitoring, billing and payment processing, and reminders to take medications. For now, whether AI will ever replace a doctor or therapist is yet to be determined.
Sources:
https://chatbotsmagazine.com/how-chatbots-will-shape-the-future-of-healthcare-fa8e30cebb1c
https://apifriends.com/2017/10/17/ai-in-healthcare/
http://www.infinite.com/the-bots-are-about-to-transform-patient-engagement-are-you-ready/
