CHATBOTS AS YOUR DOCTORS
Over the last 10 years, we have come to see robots perform and execute jobs that were once exclusive to humans – be it, manufacturing cars or filling warehouse orders.
As of today, we are no strangers to the fact that there are multiple industries that AI/ML have significantly impacted over the last couple years. However, the integration of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare with a chatbot as your doctor is set to witness a significant paradigm shift.
We are already seeing image recognition algorithms assist in detecting diseases at an astounding rate and are only beginning to scratch the surface. Chatbots are slowly being adopted within healthcare, albeit being in their nascent stage. Grand View Research stipulates that the global chatbot market is estimated to touch at least $1.23 billion by 2025 which reflects a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.3%.
Interestingly, one the first chatbots to be developed, back in 1966, was ELIZA who happened to be a psychotherapist. A computer program that simulated an actual therapy conversation to the extent where end users actually believed that it was a human at the other end.
This is what a conversation with ELIZA looked like –

Patient: Hello
Chatbot: Hey Jeff! What can I do for you today?
Patient: I’m running a temperature and getting the chills.
Chatbot: I’m sorry to hear that. The data from your smart band shows a temperature of 101 F with a regular pulse. How long have you been getting the chills?
Patient: Since last night.
Chatbot: I recommend you see your GP Dr. Susan. I’ll go ahead and schedule an appointment.
Chatbot: Hi Sam! How are you feeling today?
Patient: I have been feeling dizzy for the last hour.
Chatbot: Oh! Are you running a temperature?
Patient: Yes, 39*.
Chatbot: I see. You might be running a fever. The doctor is available after 6 PM today. Would you like me to book an appointment for you?
Patient: Yes, please!
Chatbot: Done! I have fixed your appointment.
As of now, use cases for healthcare chatbots include:
- Scheduling doctor appointments based on complexity of a patient’s symptoms
- Monitoring a patient’s health status and notifying a nurse immediately if the parameters are out of control
- Assisting homecare assistants by keeping them informed about their patients
The primary use case of a chatbot as your doctor is to free-up a doctor’s time by cutting down or eliminating unnecessary appointments. Given the sky-rocketing operational costs, healthcare organizations are always looking for ways to keep them down while simultaneously improving the patient experience.
Apart from saving time, these intelligent chatbots can also execute tasks related to billing, stock, and insurance claims management as well.
How will a healthcare chatbot work?
On four different structures namely –
- Natural Language Processing
- Knowledge Management
- Deep Learning
- Sentiment Analysis

Down the line, the healthcare chatbot’s function of being able to answer fundamental questions on health management will get even better as it will be constantly assessed and will learn from its own mistakes.
The best part? This process will not be limited to just one bot. The entire fleet of chatbots deployed in that particular vertical/service will learn from the past mistakes and continuously improve. With bots processing information rapidly, through sentiment analysis, they will learn when to direct the patient to a physician’s attention or call for help themselves.
How do you go about implementing a healthcare bot?