From the June 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
For instance, virtual health assistants can track individual health needs and send out reminders with the full consent of patients as often as a patient needs them. They can then communicate with health care providers to help doctors figure out treatment plans. As the number of patients outstrips the number of health care professionals available to serve them, these virtual assistants will allow scalable, effective provision of wellness, prevention and disease management care pathways.
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Establishing a relationship with patients
Virtual health assistants can converse and empathize with patients using real language, thereby developing relationships with them. That ability changes the whole equation. In addition to being able to converse with people, they use personal data and context to establish emotional and social relationships by delivering valuable information.
For instance, the virtual health assistant might start a conversation by telling the local weather and traffic conditions, which it knows because it has access to data sites through a patient’s smartphone. Once it is talking to you, it might quiz you about what you ate for breakfast and when you planned to exercise. You understand that it is a computer program, but because it gives you real information you can use, you begin to trust it, just as you would a real person.
Virtual assistants also have an advantage of being with patients 24 hours a day, with the ability to engage them at the precise moments they want and need to interact. There is no easier way to connect with patients than by talking to them. It’s the one, natural way of gathering real, unfiltered patient data. That’s something that our current inefficient call-center patient service models cannot provide, and virtual health assistants are already being deployed to transform health care.
About the author: Bipin Thomas is a renowned business-technology innovator and thought leader on consumer-centric health care transformation. Thomas is a board member of HealthCare Business News magazine and strategic advisor to HealthTap. Thomas is a senior executive at Flex, where he is leading business innovation by enabling intelligent products and connecting stakeholders across industries. Thomas is a former senior executive at Accenture and UST Global, where he implemented strategic digital initiatives across the care continuum.
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