Chatbots in medicine

Main article: Chatbots (Chat-bot) Virtual interlocutors

Medical chatbots are software that uses artificial intelligence to perform patient tasks. In particular, services allow you to make an appointment with a doctor, find clinics nearby and access information about medicines. In addition, medical chat bots can be used to check for symptoms of the disease and other tasks of providing medical care.

2023: The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation announced the introduction of voice assistants to doctors in 29 regions

In 29 Russian regions, voice assistants are used in healthcare. This was announced by the deputy head of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation Pavel Pugachev on August 17, 2023.

According to him, we are talking about the use of special robotic systems for receiving and processing calls from citizens, as well as for reminders, for example, about a visit to a doctor.

Voice assistants in healthcare are used in 29 Russian regions

Pugachev cited the experience of the Belgorod region as an example. According to him, earlier in the region there were 67 telephone numbers of the registries of polyclinics and more than 3 thousand complaints were recorded about the inability to get through. Now a single telephone number is used to make an appointment with a doctor and call a specialist at home.

At the same time, 400 lines are processed simultaneously, 100% of all incoming calls are received by the robot, of which 60% of calls successfully receive the service without transferring the conversation to the operator. There is not a single complaint about the inability to get through. The use of a robotic system for processing phone calls has significantly increased the satisfaction of the population with requests for an appointment with a doctor, the Deputy Minister of Health of Russia added.

According to Just AI, by the beginning of 2023, more than 100 companies worked in the conversational AI market in Russia, many of them grow by 200-400% per year. At the same time, there is no talk of fierce competition between them, since most voice services have a narrow specialization and are tailored for specific customers, the researchers note.

According to Just AI forecasts, the conversational AI market will maintain growth dynamics from 38% to 81% and in 2025 will amount to $561 million. Moreover, if by 2023 the public sector is the key customer of speech intelligent solutions, then in five years, according to Just AI forecasts, half of the entire Russian market will be occupied by the segment of specialized business products.^[1]

2020: "Geropharm" presented the speech diagnostic system "Spectrogram"

On October 30, 2020, it became known that the pharmaceutical company Geropharm presented the Spectrogram diagnostic system, which helps to detect speech disorders in children from 2 to 6 years old. All parents need to do is open a chatbot and ask the child to say a few phrases. Read more here.

2018: Medical chatbots spending reaches $116.9m

World spending on chat bots used in healthcare reached $116.9 million in 2018, according to research company ResearchAndMarkets. The data were released at the end of February 2020.

Analysts did not disclose the dynamics compared to 2017, but said that the market is growing. Its volume is expected to increase to $345.3 million by 2026, and the average annual growth rate of the market will be measured at 14.5%.

With the development of technology and the accumulation of medical data, it became possible to implement smarter questionnaires. They adapt to the situation, changing the "line of behavior" depending on the responses of users.

Demand for medical chatbots is increasing as clinics push for savings, experts say. In addition, the growth of the market is driving the adoption of smart devices, increasing Internet penetration, increasing patient waiting times and the lack of effective means of managing patient data in different countries of the world. Another driver is that medical institutions and users are becoming more aware of the benefits of medical chatbots.

At the same time, the systems are only being improved, formulating more and more personalized questions based on the information that the patient informs her. Chatbots even help make diagnoses based on the questions asked - in particular, related to the localization of the source of pain (for example, "whether pain occurs behind the eyeball when the eyes move").

The main obstacle to the development of the chatbot market is considered data privacy problems.^[2]

Notes