Virtual Health Assistant - Transforming Value Based Care

What is a Virtual Health Assistant?

Digital virtual health assistants (VHAs), also known as virtual health care assistants, are digital platforms that use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist individuals manage their health and wellness. These virtual assistants use natural language processing, machine learning, and other AI-powered technologies to provide a wide range of services. 

VHAs are not a substitute for real humans. In fact, VHA’s work in conjunction with them. They are an engagement technology that is infused with the knowledge of a specific domain or therapy as interpreted by each client. They are infinitely scalable, thus saving money by handling problems once dedicated to call centers and healthcare professionals. When VHA’s can’t respond to a question, they are programmed to redirect the user to the person or place that can help them.

Though virtual assistants have gained attention in multiple industries, their main application is in Healthcare Vertical. 

• VHAs are being created to improve patient adherence to care plans, and medications, and thus lower cost, reduce adverse or unplanned occurrences and improve consumer satisfaction.
• VHAs are becoming a necessary method for healthcare and life science organizations seeking to improve digital consumer engagement strategies.

Challenges With Current Healthcare Ecosystem

• There are hassles of long waiting times to schedule an appointment by either visiting a doctor or making a call to the hospital/clinics.
• Providers need to pay more attention to quality and personalized care but most of their time gets consumed in administrative tasks.
• Increased staff inefficiency and less quality outcomes & care.
• The problem in healthcare hospitals or provider organizations are piles of files with multiple efforts needed and huge paperwork involved from documenting down everything that patients say during appointments and recommended diagnosis & treatments, to managing the records of the admitted and discharged patients, to analyzing patients’ health records from other doctors.
• The COVID-19 pandemic created havoc and raised the great need to treat people remotely without manual intervention involved.
• Once in our lifetime, we might have googled our symptoms and falsely diagnosed ourselves. Users try to treat themselves by reading the details on Google. However, there may be a problem with the information available on the Internet and it may not be accurate. Few websites contain accurate information that is created for professional references, but have medical nomenclature and jargon (Example: American Academy of Dermatology) and are hard to understand for the end users.