Hospitals build chatbots
Multiple health systems are deploying their own chatbots to bring patient questions back into hospital channels instead of letting search engines or consumer apps own the front door. Reports note these chatbots aim to serve current patients and generate new leads, even as patients still face real access struggles reaching providers. (statnews.com) (time.com)
Hospitals are putting artificial intelligence chatbots on their websites and apps to answer patient questions before those patients turn to ChatGPT or Google. (statnews.com) STAT reported on April 13 that Hartford HealthCare planned to launch “PatientGPT” in Connecticut this week with clinical artificial intelligence company K Health. The bot is designed to draw on the system’s medical records and steer people toward care inside Hartford’s network. (statnews.com) Other health systems are making similar bets. STAT said a small number of hospitals are trying to reclaim health conversations from consumer tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini by building patient-facing bots tied to their own data and scheduling channels. (statnews.com) The push comes as hospitals face a basic access problem: many patients still cannot easily reach a doctor by phone or portal message. TIME reported on April 13 that patients often hit automated phone trees, wait days for portal replies, and struggle to get a human response from their care teams. (time.com) Hospitals are not adding these bots in a vacuum. A JAMA Network Open study of 2,174 nonfederal United States hospitals found 31.5% reported using generative artificial intelligence in 2024, and another 24.7% said they planned to adopt it within a year. (jamanetwork.com) That adoption is spreading into patient communication tools. Becker’s Hospital Review reported on March 31 that Sutter Health became the first system to adopt Epic’s patient chatbot “Emmie,” which the company said would help with visit planning and communication inside the electronic health record. (beckershospitalreview.com) The competitive pressure is also coming from outside hospital walls. Amazon said in March that its Health AI agent on Amazon’s website and app can answer questions, explain health records, renew prescriptions, and book appointments, while OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health in January. (aboutamazon.com) (openai.com) Federal policy is also moving toward more digital patient tools. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said on April 9 that it launched a first wave of HealthTech Ecosystem tools, including a Medicare App Library and patient-facing applications meant to move the system away from paper forms and fax machines. (cms.gov) The sales pitch for hospital bots is speed: answer routine questions at any hour, route people to the right service line, and keep them inside the health system’s own front door. The unresolved test is whether a chatbot can reduce the delays TIME described, or simply add another layer between patients and a clinician. (statnews.com) (time.com)
