Developing chatbots in the field of healthcare: A systematic review (original) (raw)

The Development and Use of Chatbots in Public Health: Scoping Review

JMIR Human Factors

Background Chatbots are computer programs that present a conversation-like interface through which people can access information and services. The COVID-19 pandemic has driven a substantial increase in the use of chatbots to support and complement traditional health care systems. However, despite the uptake in their use, evidence to support the development and deployment of chatbots in public health remains limited. Recent reviews have focused on the use of chatbots during the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of conversational agents in health care more generally. This paper complements this research and addresses a gap in the literature by assessing the breadth and scope of research evidence for the use of chatbots across the domain of public health. Objective This scoping review had 3 main objectives: (1) to identify the application domains in public health in which there is the most evidence for the development and use of chatbots; (2) to identify the types of chatbots that are bein...

Technical Aspects of Developing Chatbots for Medical Applications: Scoping Review

Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2020

Background Chatbots are applications that can conduct natural language conversations with users. In the medical field, chatbots have been developed and used to serve different purposes. They provide patients with timely information that can be critical in some scenarios, such as access to mental health resources. Since the development of the first chatbot, ELIZA, in the late 1960s, much effort has followed to produce chatbots for various health purposes developed in different ways. Objective This study aimed to explore the technical aspects and development methodologies associated with chatbots used in the medical field to explain the best methods of development and support chatbot development researchers on their future work. Methods We searched for relevant articles in 8 literature databases (IEEE, ACM, Springer, ScienceDirect, Embase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar). We also performed forward and backward reference checking of the selected articles. Study selection was per...

A systematic review of chatbots in inclusive healthcare: insights from the last 5 years

Universal access in the information society, 2024

Healthcare is one of the most important sectors of our society, and during the COVID-19 pandemic a new challenge emerged-how to support people safely and effectively at home regarding their health-related problems. In this regard chatbots or conversational agents (CAs) play an increasingly important role, and are spreading rapidly. They can enhance not only user interaction by delivering quick feedback or responses, but also hospital management, thanks to several of their features. Considerable research is focused on making CAs more reliable, accurate, and robust. However, a critical aspect of chatbots is how to make them inclusive, in order to effectively support the interaction of users unfamiliar with technology, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. In this study, we investigate the current use of chatbots in healthcare, exploring their evolution over time and their inclusivity. The study was carried out on four digital libraries (ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar) on research articles published in the last 5 years, with a total of 21 articles describing chatbots implemented and actually used in the eHealth clinical area. The results showed a notable improvement in the use of chatbots in the last few years but also highlight some design issues, including poor attention to inclusion. Based on the findings, we recommend a different kind of approach for implementing chatbots with an inclusive accessibility-by-design approach.

AI-based Healthcare Chatbot

IRJET, 2022

Amid the development of artificial intelligence technologies such as deep learning and natural language processing, chatbots are our society's most extensively used services. Chatbot is a combination of the words "chat" and "robot," and it refers to software that either provides appropriate responses to questions or receives commands through communication with humans. Chatbots are used by computers to replace customer response tasks that humans used to do. Chatbots combine the concepts of chatting and robots. Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence make use of conversation systems to enable users to have conversations in natural language with the chatbots through voice, text, or both. Non-face-to-face culture, also known as "untact", which has emerged as both a societal phenomenon and a part of everyday life as a direct result of the rapid spread of COVID-19 is becoming the new standard. Amidst all of these shifting societal climates and changes, there are also active transitions occurring in the provision of healthcare services and the management of health using AI chatbots. This article examines the definition and structure of artificial intelligence chatbots. It also examines many examples of how AI chatbots are used in the healthcare industry. Finally, it identifies the advantages and limitations of AI-based healthcare chatbots and presents the future direction of AI-based healthcare chatbots.

Tana, a Healthcare Chatbot to Help Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic at a University Hospital in Argentina

Studies in health technology and informatics, 2022

A Chatbot or Conversational Agent is a computer application that simulates the conversation with a human person (by text or voice), giving automated responses to people's needs. In the healthcare domain, chatbots can be beneficial to help patients, as a complement to care by health personnel, especially in times of high demand or constrained resources such as the COVID-19 Pandemic. In this paper we share the design and implementation of a healthcare chatbot called Tana at the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires. Considering best practices and being aware of possible unintended consequences, we must take advantage of information and communication technologies, such as chatbots, to analyze and promote useful conversations for the health of all people.

THE USE OF INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION AGENTS (CHATBOTS) AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTING THERAPEUTIC CONDUCTS IN HEALTHCARE (Atena Editora)

THE USE OF INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION AGENTS (CHATBOTS) AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTING THERAPEUTIC CONDUCTS IN HEALTHCARE (Atena Editora), 2023

INTRODUCTION: With technological advances, conversational agents, such as chatbots, and telemedicine emerge as allies to improve the quality of life and communication in the health sector (. These technologies allow the recording of symptoms and remote care, monitoring the state physical and psychological of patients, facilitating clinical practice. OBJECTIVE: analyze and evaluate how the use of chatbots is influencing the healthcare sector as a clinical assistance tool. METHODS: This study carried out a systematic review of the literature by searching the PUBMED and ACM Digital Library databases, using the descriptors “TELEMONITORING”, “TELEMEDICINE” and “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”, for articles from the last 5 years, available in English. RESULTS: A table was created with the 6 selected articles, structured according to the year of publication, the chatbot used, the objective of the technology and its repercussion. CONCLUSION: The use of intelligent conversational agents (chatbots) has proven to be an effective tool in treatment, diagnosis and medical monitoring, in addition to providing benefits for the patient and the healthcare professional. However, it is necessary to increase the number of studies on the subject, so that more and more areas of health are reached by the benefits of this technology.

Chatbot use cases in the Covid-19 public health response

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2022

ABSTRACTObjectiveTo identify chatbot use cases deployed for public health response activities during the Covid-19 pandemic.Material and MethodsWe searched PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Knowledge, and Google Scholar in October 2020 and performed a follow-up search in July 2021. We screened articles based on their abstracts and keywords in their text, reviewed potentially relevant articles, and screened their references to (a) assess whether the article met inclusion criteria and (b) identify additional articles. Chatbots, their use cases, and chatbot design characteristics were extracted from the articles and information from other sources and by accessing those chatbots that were publicly accessible.ResultsOur search returned 3334 articles, 61 articles met our inclusion criteria, and 61 chatbots deployed in 30 countries were identified. We categorized chatbots based on their public health response use case(s) and design. Six categories of public health response use cases emerged comprising...

Healthcare Chatbot using Artificial Intelligence

International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET), 2022

Healthcare as one of the vital spheres of human life is badly falling behind technological progress. While e-commerce, hospitality, and the food industry are advanced and augmented with various technological solutions, healthcare still sticks to the traditional way of doing things. Why can you order a pizza in ten seconds but must wait for an appointment with a doctor for days and weeks? How can you make sure that urgent medical help is indeed urgent? Why finding a credible answer to an important question about your health is so annoyingly difficult? I am also deeply concerned about the lack of attention that the healthcare industry receives. And the first and easiest solution I can offer to change it is to implement chatbot technology in healthcare. Healthcare chatbots will never substitute doctors. But they provide plenty of opportunities to facilitate their job or to improve their performance. The medical chat-bots functioning depends on Natural Language Processing which helps users to submit their problems about their health. The user can ask any personal query related to health care through the chatbot without being out physically available to the hospital. By using Google API for voice-text and text-voice conversion query is sent to the chatbot and gets a related answer and displays the answer on the android app. The system's major concern behind developing this web-based platform is analyzing customers' sentiments.

Technical Metrics Used to Evaluate Health Care Chatbots: Scoping Review

Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2020

BackgroundDialog agents (chatbots) have a long history of application in health care, where they have been used for tasks such as supporting patient self-management and providing counseling. Their use is expected to grow with increasing demands on health systems and improving artificial intelligence (AI) capability. Approaches to the evaluation of health care chatbots, however, appear to be diverse and haphazard, resulting in a potential barrier to the advancement of the field.ObjectiveThis study aims to identify the technical (nonclinical) metrics used by previous studies to evaluate health care chatbots.MethodsStudies were identified by searching 7 bibliographic databases (eg, MEDLINE and PsycINFO) in addition to conducting backward and forward reference list checking of the included studies and relevant reviews. The studies were independently selected by two reviewers who then extracted data from the included studies. Extracted data were synthesized narratively by grouping the id...

Artificial Intelligence Based Chatbots to Combat COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) Chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversation and use artificial intelligence including machine learning and natural language processing to interact with users via natural language. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of digital health technologies such as chatbot has accelerated. This study aimed to investigate the application of AI chatbots in combating COVID-19 pandemic and to explore their features. Methods: We reviewed of literature on health chatbots during the COVID-19 pandemic. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar were searched by using related keywords such as "chatbot", “conversational agent” and “Artificial intelligence”. To select the relevant articles, we conducted title, abstract, and full-text screening based on inclusion/exclusion criteria. Chatbots, their applications and design features were extracted from selected articles. Results: Out of 673 articles initially ident...