The next time you call to make an appointment (if your doctor does not offer online booking) a chatbot will handle the call. This appears to satisfy the Turing test. (User cannot discriminate between a computer algorithm and a live person.)
The age of talking algorithms is here.
In 2018, Google stunned the world with the latest feature of the Google Assistant, Duplex, which was able to make an appointment in a hair salon in eerily human-sounding conversational sentences. Chatbots, computer programs or smart algorithms conducting conversation via auditory or textual methods, are becoming more and more popular and widespread. Do you want to know more dad jokes? Read the latest news? Figure out riddles? Plenty of messenger bots offer forms of entertainment.
These features are here now.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.blog.woobox.com
Chatbots and their place in healthcare
Obviously, there are countless cases where a digital personal assistant or a chatbot could help physicians, nurses, patients or their families. Better organization of patient pathways, medication management, help in emergency situations or with first aid, offering a solution for simpler medical issues: these are all possible situations for chatbots to step in and ease the burden on medical professionals.
Health chatbots are also being used to address specific issues in healthcare. Northwell Health recently launched one to help reduce “no-shows” for colonoscopies, a procedure elemental in colorectal cancer diagnosis. This issue is particularly concerning as 40 percent of less privileged patients don’t follow through with the procedure. The A.I.-based solution is being offered at Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center and Southside Hospital. Northwell says that personalized chatbot will “encourage patients by addressing misunderstandings and concerns about the exam, delivering information in a responsive, conversational way over email or text”. Researchers will also be able to monitor patient satisfaction, cancellations, no-shows, and successfully completed exams with the app’s use.
In some cases, health chatbots are also able to connect patients with clinicians for diagnosis or treatment, but that is already one step further down the line. The general idea is that in the future, these talking or texting smart algorithms might become the first contact point for primary care. Patients will not get in touch with physicians or nurses or any medical professional with every one of their health questions but will turn to chatbots first. If the little medical helper could not comfortably respond to the raised issues, it will transfer the case to a real-life doctor.
As the number of health chatbots multiplies with incredible speed, we decided to list the most promising ones to have a clue about where the health chatbot industry is heading.
Farewell to some, welcome to others
One would think that artificial “beings” like chatbots would be immune to human beings’ eventuality – death. But some of those virtual chatty beings do seem to share a similar fate to their human companions…
In the last couple of years, we’ve had to bid farewell to some prominent health chatbots. Izzy, the handy period tracking and women’s health bot, stopped to exist. Eva, from Spain-based Bots4Health, who could chat about a wide range of health issues with users followed suit. Even some promising tech like Cognitoys with its dinosaur-shaped A.I. companion toys went off the radar.
We envision a future with chatbots playing a key role in people’s health, we cannot help but feel let down by the “demise” of those virtual health companions. The latter had at their core the noble aim to ease the burden on medical professionals while making patients the point of care. Alas, we’ll have to bid farewell to those bots who left us but we are happy to welcome new ones in this venture as well!
Indeed, health chatbots are on the rise and keep attracting investors. A Crunchbase analysis found that VCs have invested more than $800 million in at least 14 known startups who offer some version of a chatbot with health features.
As such, we decided to update the list of our favorite chatbots relevant in 2020. Say hi to your new health buddy!
1. OneRemission
This New York-based company launched its chatbot with the aim to help ease the life of those involved in the fight against cancer with the information they need.
https://keenethics.com/
For cancer patients and cancer survivors, the app empowers them by providing a comprehensive list of diets, exercises, and post-cancer practices, curated by Integrative Medicine experts, so that they don’t need to constantly rely on a doctor. They can, for example, search about the cancer-related risks and benefits of a certain food product.
Should they need the help of a specialist, OneRemission features the ability for users to consult with an online oncologist 24/7.
2. Youper
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Source: https://techcrunch.com/
Basing itself on the latest scientific research, Youper’s A.I. monitors and improves users’ emotional health with quick personalized conversations using psychological techniques. To further help one improve their emotional health, the app features personalized meditations as well as the ability to track mood and monitor emotional health. As users communicate with the chatbot, it will learn more about them and fine-tune the experience in order to fit their needs
3. Safedrugbot
The idea was born out of a real demand: the developer of the app was asked by a doctor to quickly and easily retrieve information about drugs to which breastfeeding mothers may be exposed. The goal was reached: Safedrugbot is a chat messaging service that offers assistant-like support to health professionals, doctors who need appropriate data about the use of drugs during breastfeeding. Moreover, it provides information about the active ingredients present in the medication and alternative medicines.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.safeinbreastfeeding.com
4. Babylon Health
The British subscription, online medical consultation and health service, Babylon Health, was founded in 2013 and is now valued at more than $2 billion. The company offers A.I. consultation based on personal medical history and common medical knowledge as well as live video consultation with a real doctor whenever a patient needs it.
In the first case, users report the symptoms of their illness to the app, which checks them against a database of diseases using speech recognition, and then offers an appropriate course of action. In the second case, which already goes beyond the usual service of a chatbot, doctors listen and look carefully to diagnose the patient and then write prescriptions or refer to a specialist if required.
The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) started to use the chatbot for dispensing medical advice for a trial period in 2017. Nowadays, the collaboration is going strong as the company provides NHS patients near London and Birmingham with digital consultations with doctors (over 700,000 conducted so far). It also plans to extend its service to other cities in the U.K. in the future.
Top Telemedicine Solutions
Source: www.pharmaphorum.com
5. Florence
The chatbot is basically a “personal nurse” in the color blue, and works on Facebook Messenger, Skype or Kik. “She” can remind patients to take their pills, which might be a handy feature for older patients. You just write the name of the medicine in chat, the number of times a day you must take it and at what time. Then, Florence sends you a message in chat every time you must take the pill.
Moreover, Florence can track the user’s health, for example, body weight, mood or period, thus helping them to reach their goals. The chatbot also has the skills to find the nearest pharmacy or doctor’s office in case you need it.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.techcrunch.com
7. Ada Health
Over 1.5 million people have already tried the health companion app, which can assess the user’s health based on the indicated symptoms using its vast, A.I.-based database. We also gave this one a spin in our big symptom checker review and found it to be the one with the most features from those we tested.
Daniel Nathrath, CEO of Ada Health told The Medical Futurist that in the future, “Ada will become a standard diagnostic tool for doctors. That is already the case; users can share their health assessment with their doctor or, in the UK, they can choose to consult with a qualified GP via our Doctor Chat feature. Ada will also become much more of an ongoing health companion, helping patients and doctors to intelligently monitor health data over the long term to enable predictive and proactive care.” Moreover, they have experimented with a voice interface and have trialed using Ada through Amazon Alexa.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.medium.com
8. Sensely
The virtual medical assistant named Molly can assess the patient’s symptoms using speech, text, images, and video. As the user wishes, it can use text or speech to communicate. Based on the gathered data as well as the information fed to its smart algorithm, Sensely interprets the user’s symptoms and recommends a diagnosis.
Molly uses the colors of the triage system, well-known in emergency care to decide about the urgency of a case. In Sensely’s symptom triage it means an assessment of whether self-care is enough or the patient should turn to a doctor. Moreover, it offers a local service discovery and rich resources for self-care.
9. Buoy Health
Reportedly developed by a team of doctors and computer scientists through the Harvard Innovation Laboratory, the company’s algorithm was trained on clinical data from 18,000 medical papers to mirror the literature referenced by physicians. Examples of data include 5 million patients and approximately 1,700 conditions.
You can check your symptoms online or browse in the vast database of Buoy Health to figure out what might be wrong with your health. The chatbot thoroughly asks you about the details of your medical state and offers you various solutions and actionable steps to take.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.cursor.org
10. Infermedica
Infermedica leverages machine learning technology to power the symptom-checker chatbot, Symptomate. The platform runs online and on mobile phones as a chatbot or voice-based application. It assesses the user’s health status and based on the symptoms it sets up a possible diagnosis and gives actionable recommendations. In 2017, Infermedica conducted three million diagnostic interviews with patients and the company doubled its monthly recurring revenues in 2018.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.youtube.com
11. GYANT
GYANT is a health chatbot that asks patients to understand their symptoms and then sends the data to doctors who provide diagnoses and prescribe medicine in real-time. The service is available on Facebook Messenger or Alexa, but the team plans to release it on every messaging platform soon. In addition, they not only provide help for English-speaking patients, but GYANT can speak to users in Spanish, Portuguese or German. GYANT is an Amazon Alexa skill and can be enabled here
In March 2019, the company reported that it prompted over 785,000 people in Latin America to successfully complete a pre-diabetes screening. Following this, more than 174,000 at-risk people from low-income populations participated in treatment with weekly glucose checks at local pharmacies.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.healthcare.digital
12. Cancer Chatbot
is a helpful resource for cancer patients, caregivers, friends and family on Facebook Messenger. The chatbot offers plenty of resources for patients from chemo tips and tricks to free services. It provides resources for caregivers to ease the burden of caring and making their lives easier. Moreover, it offers friends and families advice on what to say and how to help cancer patients best. It’s a sophisticated and well-thought-out solution. The website offers a number of turnkey chatbots that can be purchased online.
Health Chatbots
Source: www.ihadcancer.com
As the health chatbot market is buzzing, no one could collect every one of them as the next day; new ones will appear on the horizon. That also shows what bright future chatbots have in healthcare and how broad the scope is where they can lend a helping hand to both patients and physicians. Do you know about any exciting health chatbot innovation? Let The Medical Futurist know on its Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn channel!
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Google’s Masterplan for Healthcare
Like many tech companies, digital or otherwise, healthcare is a tempting target for business opportunities. Google is one of these examples. About five years ago Google had an online form of EHR called Google Health. It failed to get traction and was eventually downgraded and removed from the market place. Now Alphabet was created to be the umbrella company for many related products. Their present success in health IT is the new Apple Smartwatch 5. The device actually has been tested and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This is no small feat.
What if we looked at all the moves, tech giants are taking in healthcare?
Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Google – the „big four” for healthcare?
In September 2017, Microsoft announced the launch of its new healthcare division at its Cambridge research facility, to use its artificial intelligence software to enter the health market. Only in two months, the FDA cleared the first medical device accessory for Apple Watch, Alivecor’s Kardiaband. A few months earlier, Apple had also launched an initiative called the Apple Heart Study in partnership with Stanford Medicine. Moreover, in December 2017, Tim Cook & Co. announced the development of an advanced heart-monitoring feature for future versions of its smartwatch. The latest news in January 2018 was that Apple is bringing health records to iPhones. After all these steps, is it so far-fetched to think that Apple might soon turn Siri into a medical chatbot that alerts you if something is wrong.
No other company in the Silicon Valley is investing so heavily in healthcare-related companies as Alphabet’s venture arm, GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) does.
Since it raised its first fund in 2009, it has backed nearly 60 health-related enterprises. Their portfolio is very diverse ranging from genetics to telemedicine. GV invested in 23andme, the most well-known direct-to-consumer genetic testing company with one of the biggest DNA databases in the world. In addition, Google has stakes in Oscar Health, the New York-based venture disrupting health insurance; Doctor on Demand, a telehealth company helping people talking to physicians from afar; Flatiron Health, a company building a data platform dedicated to oncology or Impossible Foods developing plant-based meats and cheeses. Of course, Amazon doesn’t want to lag behind. But Jeff Bezos is rather attracted to retail and pharmacies. According to CNBC’s news in January 2018, the Seattle-based giant hired one of Amazon’s most high-profile hires to date in health, Martin Levine. He could be joining the tech giant’s internal healthcare group known as 1492, which is testing a variety of secretive projects. Amazon acquired Pillpack, an innovative online pharmacy note for its unique system of dosing packets, for each dose and time of day. Some analysts even regard Amazon’s favorite digital assistant, Alexa as the future’s possible digital doctor. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase also announced a partnership to cut health-care costs and improve services for their US employees.
These four companies have tremendous wealth and are highly liquid with vaults filled with cash. They have tremendous potential to build things with usable interfaces. Many physicians complain that standard EHR vendors would benefit if Apple redesigned their EHR GUIs,
None of these predictions are weird. Some are already operational. The unknown factor is will the market accept and support a business model for the long term. A number of very good AI applications have come and gone.
To be successful in a highly competitive and reducing reimbursement environment any app must demonstrate utility and a return on investment with significant savings.
Related e-books
A Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
Top 100 Digital Health Companies Addressing Real-World Needs
The Medical Futurist
Webicina Kft. © 2020
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