Integrating Conversational AI into Patient Engagement and Triage: Evaluating the Efficiency, Accuracy, and Ethical Considerations of Healthcare Chatbots in Providing Symptom Assessment, Appointment Scheduling, and Personalized Health Information
Healthcare chatbots, powered by conversational AI and natural language processing, are transforming how patients access basic medical information and interact with providers. They efficiently handle high-volume, repetitive tasks like scheduling appointments, answering FAQs, and providing preliminary symptom checks, freeing up human staff for more complex or critical patient care.
However, their increasing role necessitates a rigorous focus on diagnostic accuracy and data privacy, as relying on an automated system for triage involves inherent risk. Ethical guidelines are paramount to ensure these tools are implemented responsibly, maintaining a focus on being a supplement to, not a replacement for, a human medical consultation.
