Revolutionizing Healthcare: Unveiling the Transformative Power of Chatbots Through a Systematic Literature Review

Introduction

In the digital age, the healthcare industry is evolving and playing a key role in optimizing the patient care and wellness process. In this scenario, most prominent disruptive technology appears in chatbots, i.e., digital tools that are revolutionizing the healthcare landscape (Mariani et al., 2023). By definition, chatbots are virtual assistants that, through a sophisticated algorithm, can respond to and communicate with people who interface with them through both text and voice. In most cases, chatbot-human communication can essentially replicate a dialogue between two human persons (Liu and Sundar, 2018; Adam et al., 2021). The engagement of chatbots in healthcare and well-being system is triggering several research topics as patient engagement, administrative support, and clinical assistance. Moreover, chatbots can simply help communication between patients and healthcare practitioners: indeed, these digital tools facilitate appointment scheduling, offering real-time support, and delivering customized health information. With these supports, the administrative efficiency and the automation of routine tasks are greatly enhanced. In this scenario, some concerns need to be considered: chatbots and digitals tools collect private and interpersonal data, thus prioritizing the crucial role of trust. Eventually, innovation and disruptive technologies are reshaping the well-being system and the corporate aims and priorities of healthcare industry. Specifically, this chapter aims to systematically review the scientific literature in various fields to highlight the power of chatbots in health care and provide a holistic and systematic understanding of their use, as well as the benefits they bring to the health care system, while also highlighting the possible problems inherent in this technology. In the digital healthcare scenario, chatbots trigger the evolution of patient care and education system (Tudor Car et al., 2020): chatbots are useful to spam information around healthcare system and to enhance the potential alternatives treatments by increasing patient involvement and engagement. Chatbots are also used extensively in healthcare for administrative chores. Healthcare firms are increasingly using chatbots to automate administrative tasks including appointment scheduling, billing questions, and insurance verification (Ye et al., 2021). This automation not only cuts operating costs, but it also frees up human resources to focus on higher-value, challenging work. Chatbots also have a relevant influence on symptom assessment and triage (Tudor Car et al., 2020). Indeed, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots can help patients assess symptoms, thus offering faster and more specific triage. By triaging in this way, chatbots provide an opportunity to identify the patient's condition through professional and immediate medical care. Chatbots have played an important role in the recent boom in telemedicine usage, which was spurred in large part by the COVID-19 epidemic. The weight of the healthcare industry in advanced economies is shaping not only the technologies of surgery and research, but also information technology and solutions to improve communication with the patient, between healthcare professionals and medical institutions. Artificial intelligence can intervene in the interaction between physicians and patients. With due caution, there is no doubt about the potential impact of technology in optimizing communication, especially in health care, from hospitals to physicians (Sheth, 2020). Reducing consultation times, decreasing, or even eliminating unnecessary hospital visits, will improve service quality, but also other relevant areas in healthcare business management, such as marketing strategies and corporate image. Chatbots can satisfy patient requests, increasing patient engagement (Magni et al., 2023). In fact, patients like to receive a quick response from the chatbot on medical or health information, follow what the chatbot suggests to them, and ease the formal procedure in case of triage. All this not only helps professionals handle an increasing volume of medical inquiries, but on the patient side it greatly enhances the goodness of experience and the benefits chatbots can provide. Efficiency and cost reduction are additional benefits that can result from the use of chatbots in the health care system (Heo and Lee, 2018). In fact, by automating administrative processes in health care, chatbots can reduce response and administrative task time, providing operational efficiency to the health care system.