The past few years have seen a tremendous increase in digitalization in the healthcare industry. A user-friendly digital experience is as important as the standard of care for most patients. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare industries helps businesses streamline patient management, sales processes, appointments, and improve overall patient experience.
Artificial intelligence can help healthcare businesses of all sizes step up their game and gain a significant edge over their competitors.
This blog post explores the many ways using artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry can boost your growth.
Table of contents
What is AI in healthcare?
AI in healthcare describes the application of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry using technologies like machine learning, Natural language processing, Generative AI, and other AI programs.
Drug discovery, medical diagnosis, surgery assistance, patient data management, automated customer service, and data analysis are just some examples of how AI in healthcare can impact the industry.
What are the benefits of using AI in healthcare?
AI in healthcare provides medical providers with accurate, streamlined support. AI systems can take on mundane tasks prone to human error. Artificial intelligence also helps medical professionals be more efficient and accurate and, ultimately, improves patient outcomes.
A recent report from McKinsey estimates that using AI in healthcare for administrative tasks and streamlining processes could help businesses save up to 9% of their total costs annually
Some of the major benefits of leveraging AI in healthcare are:
- Cost savings
- Efficiency in operations
- Scalability with lean teams
- Reduced wait times with appointments
Cost saving
Healthcare costs and the cost of running a healthcare business have been significantly on the rise over the past few years. Businesses are struggling to meet customer expectations, while still running a profitable venture. Artificial intelligence can help them close the expectation-reality gap and reduce costs as well.
Businesses can:
- Use machine learning to train chabots and reduce customer support costs
- Generative AI to streamline administration tasks, improve insurance claim management, authorizations, and so on.
- Natural language processing to spot trends and opportunities without spending a lot of resources on them.
Efficiency in operations
AI in healthcare can tackle a large volume of data from electronic health records to help healthcare providers provide accurate diagnoses and tailored treatment options.
Clinics and hospitals can also improve patient experience by streamlining operations by introducing artificial intelligence in repetitive tasks such as generating reports, setting up reminders, and automating payments, to name a few.
Scalability with lean teams
The U.S. needs over 4 million more healthcare workers in the next five years to meet demand. Artificial intelligence can help ease the labor shortage. This especially is a boon to businesses looking to expand to multiple locations, but struggle to find the resource due to skill or budget shortages.
AI can help you scale medical procedure scheduling, payment processing, marketing, advertising, record keeping, data maintenance, and so much more. This way, you can grow faster and boost employee productivity as well.
Reduced wait times with appointment
According to one study, using AI to automate patient registration reduced wait times by an average of 12 minutes. This was by using the technology to analyze a patient’s history, determine urgency, and find the best appointment slot with the data.
Businesses can also set up an AI-driven appointment scheduling process that schedules appointments, sends reminders, and makes sure patients reach on time and reduce overall wait times.
Birdeye – all-in-one platform
Automate Reviews, Ratings, Listings & Reputation Management with Birdeye.
11 ways to use AI in healthcare
Artificial intelligence has wide ranging applications in the healthcare industry, across all verticals. Healthcare providers can leverage AI in:
- Improving patient experience
- Managing patient data
- Review generation
- Omnichannel support
- Trend predictions
- Appointment systems
- Automating administrative tasks
- Simplifying medical documentation
- Improving healthcare marketing
- Feedback collection
- Social media marketing
Improving patient experience
The healthcare industry is rapidly growing and patients now have the option to choose from different service providers. Guaranteeing a satisfactory patient experience is one of the few ways healthcare businesses can seek to retain their clients.
With Artificial Intelligence, healthcare businesses can:
- Analyze their processes and make changes wherever there is scope
- Understand customer pain points from market research and model solutions accordingly
- Make onboarding easier on patients and staff
Johns Hopkins Hospital used predictive AI programs to create a better patient journey. A task force armed with AI data science revamped every aspect of activity throughout the hospital to improve patient experience. As a result, admitted patients got a hospital bed 38% more quickly.
Managing patient data
The healthcare system is just the latest frontier in the growth of big data. From doctors’ visits to hospitalizations to even health information from wearable tech, each patient accumulates a wealth of health data. But that data is only useful if healthcare providers can manage it right.
Clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare businesses can adopt AI technology solutions that search patient data for relevant information upon command instead of having staff manually combing through old records.
Artificial intelligence can help businesses:
- Find patient’s medical and billing history when they book an appointment
- Manage all insurance and payment data within a single file to avoid refilling forms
- Analyze intake forms to understand the ideal customer profile for the business.
Ofcourse, when you use AI to manage patient data, it is important to make sure that the tool is HIPAA compliant and secures the data while processing it like Birdeye does.
Hardin Memorial Health in Kentucky uses AI technology to pull relevant information from a patient’s record that providers can review on a single screen.
Review generation
According to one report, patients won’t consider a doctor who has a rating lower than 4 stars. AI in healthcare can help you increase your review rating on major channels by automating review requests to all your patients.
Often, clinics and hospitals provide excellent standards of care but miss documenting that publicly in the form of reviews. All customers need prompting to write reviews and sending them manual requests can take a toll on resources.
With AI, healthcare businesses can:
- Send automated review requests to all patients as soon they complete a transaction
- Remind patients to complete outstanding review requests
- Analyze the success of these review request emails or messages so that the business can tweak the messaging
Birdeye helps businesses improve their reputation on review sites with the robust review generation mechanism. For example, Zynex Medical went from a single one-star review to over 4,000 reviews averaging 4.5 stars in a few short years with Birdeye.
Omnichannel support
In many ways, healthcare is like any other business. Medical professionals who provide a better customer experience will be more successful. Providing support through different channels is one way to provide better service and improve efficiency.
Using AI,
- You can communicate with patients via text messaging, social media channels, or Web Chat 24/7.
- Compile frequently asked questions and enable self-service with pre-written answers with the AI assistant.
- Manage all conversations from a single unified inbox as with Birdeye Messaging to streamline support.
Make sure you use solutions that are HIPAA-compliant to secure patient data.
Trend predictions
AI applications can do more than find the right information in the proverbial haystack. Using data science, healthcare AI tools can help businesses gain actionable insights to grow their business. Healthcare providers can use these insights to anticipate patient needs.
Some of the major ways to leverage AI in healthcare trend predictions are:
- Anticipate recurring appointments and inform patients accordingly
- Analyze hospital spending and draw accurate financial budgets
- Track and predict medical supplies in storage and trigger orders accordingly
- Reduce complications by anticipating outcomes using predictive models.
For example, The University of Texas Southwestern discovered that data science could give insight into readmissions. They used predictive analytics to identify patients more likely to face complications after discharge.
Appointment systems
Almost all healthcare service providers rely on appointment systems to schedule resources, manage time, and help customers book a slot with them. However, you can massively upgrade your appointment scheduling processes using artificial intelligence.
AI-driven appointment scheduling systems help businesses:
- Book appointments 24/7 using the AI assistant to help the patient find the right doctor and service
- Streamline and manage all appointments across multiple locations
- Plan the resource requirement based on the appointments
- Send reminders to patients to reduce wait times and cancellations
- Book recurring appointments based on the type of treatment
- Collect patient data with customized intake forms
Automating administrative tasks
Up to 30% of healthcare costs goes towards administrative tasks. Artificial intelligence can help reduce much of this spending, while optimizing the processes.
AI can handle all periodic and repetitive tasks such as:
- Sending invoices
- Maintaining shift records
- Doctor and nurse shift scheduling
- Anticipating shortages
For example, Scheduling nursing shifts is just one administrative task that Mercy Health turned over to AI. The hospital conglomerate addressed its nursing shortage by offering flexible shifts to “gig” nurses, former full-time nurses willing to pick up shifts. Nurses can download an app to their phones and choose to work shifts that can be as short as two hours.
Simplifying medical documentation
Medical documentation is easily one of the most time-consuming tasks healthcare professionals face. Transcribing patient information into digital data is labor-intensive work and with AI you can divert those resources to other places.
Conversational AI can pick up key phrases and information when you talk with your patients. Generative AI can then input that patient data into the appropriate fields. All you have to do is read through the information and make minor adjustments.
AI can also help doctors create quick and efficient medical summaries for insurance claims and legal reasons.
Improving healthcare marketing
It is important for all businesses to market themselves so that the right customers can find them. This is true for healthcare providers too, especially in the current competitive environment. Using AI to guide their marketing efforts, healthcare providers can boost the success of their efforts while optimizing their budgets as well.
AI can help businesses:
- Understand their customers better by analyzing buyer personas to devise powerful marketing campaigns
- Analyze existing patient data to understand pain points and position themselves as the solution
- Analyze the success of existing marketing and advertising campaigns
- Identify happy clients via reviews and surveys to promote loyalty and referral programs.
Feedback management
Often the key to success is right in front of us and we miss it. And that’s what happens when healthcare providers neglect the mountain of feedback they receive every day. This feedback holds the key to knowing what is going right and going wrong for your service.
Healthcare businesses must leverage AI in customer feedback management to:
- Send automated surveys to all customers and collect feedback on all their processes. This includes onboarding, diagnosis, treatment, follow-up, and payment
- Analyze customer feedback to pull out actionable insights for growth
- Identify unique selling points of the business to use them in marketing materials.
Social media marketing
Customer communication channels are changing and the impact is now visible in the healthcare industry as well. Patients now like to research potential service providers on various channels including social media before booking an appointment.
It now becomes important for businesses to build and maintain a strong social media presence on these platforms. However, consistently posting content, engaging with users, and answering questions can be resource-intensive. But not with AI.
Using AI-driven social media management tools like Birdeye helps business:
- Generate post ideas for their platforms that help them build a strong following
- Monitor social media engagement and respond to customers on different platforms from a single easy-to-use dashboard
- Market their brand using positive reviews garnered on popular review sites
- Respond to customer queries using an AI assistant
How to leverage AI in healthcare with Birdeye
Implementing AI in your healthcare practice feels like a mammoth task. And some of the AI technology may seem out of reach, but it is not. But Birdeye has AI technology that you can adopt now to streamline and grow your healthcare practice.
Appointments
Reducing friction in the patient journey is one of the keys to a successful healthcare system. Birdeye Appointments powered by AI will improve the patient experience while reducing no-shows and cancellations. Use Birdeye Appointments to let patients book online and send automatic follow-ups.
Birdeye Inbox
Birdeye Messaging uses AI technology to put all of your patient communications on a single, secure platform. You can message a potential patient on your website or conduct consultations on Webchat. Whatever the channel, you’ll gain a comprehensive view of all patient conversations with Birdeye Inbox.
Birdeye reviews
Birdeye’s AI-powered reviews system gives you the tools you need to improve your online reputation. You can use Reviews to send automated review requests or respond to reviews you’ve received. Birdeye Reviews also gives medical providers the power to monitor reviews on hundreds of sites within one dashboard.
Hughston Clinic used Birdeye Reviews to earn a four-fold increase in online reviews. The boost in their online reputation improved their SEO, increased visits to their websites, and, ultimately, led to more phone calls.
Birdeye Insights
Birdeye’s AI-driven Insights will help you better understand your patients’ experience. You’ll learn where you can improve, even if you have hundreds of locations. The artificial intelligence powering Birdeye Insights will shed light on patterns that you may miss otherwise.
Birdeye Webchat
Connect with potential customers with Birdeye’s AI-driven Webchat. Any medical procedure, no matter how big or small, evokes anxiety. Be available 24/7 to your website visitors who may otherwise hesitate to book an appointment due to unanswered questions.
FAQs about AI in healthcare
From medical imaging to diagnostics to treatments, AI touches every facet of healthcare. Medical providers can use AI to schedule appointments, manage patient communications, and grow their online reputation.
AI can solve issues in patient journey, fiscal management, resource management, and diagnosis by streamlining care, reducing errors, and supporting healthcare providers.
One example of AI in healthcare is healthcare providers using artificial intelligence technology to automate appointments and patient communication.
Work with Birdeye to leverage AI in healthcare
The future of AI in healthcare is here. And the healthcare AI industry will grow 20-fold within the decade. Artificial intelligence will reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes.
AI will also reduce human errors, deliver insights, and all-around improve patient care to help healthcare practices grow successful.
Use Birdeye’s AI-powered tools for patient communications, scheduling, reputation management, and insights. Contact us today.
About the Author
Sunitha Raghunathan
Originally published
