The Virtual Health Assistant

 

Watch as a Virtual Health Assistant Engages a Patient on a Smartphone

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Will virtual nurses and pocket health coaches improve patient engagement?

With the Alme natural language platform from Next IT, you can provide the personalized service of a concierge while delivering the business benefits of a technology-based self-service solution.

Alme is a multi-modal, multi-channel, multi-language platform designed to revolutionize customer service by creating intelligent virtual assistants capable of understanding what your customers actually mean. Alme uses this knowledge in unprecedented ways to deliver information and perform tasks, giving your customers an experience that’s all about them.

Talk, tap or type—Next IT virtual assistants are ready with the right answer, providing an integrated approach proven to boost customer satisfaction, user engagement and revenue.

Natural Language Processing has appeared in the business world. Much more powerful that a voice tree selection it offers a form of artificial intelligence able to understand selective questions and answers verbally.  Mobile  health and smartphone users are familiar with Apple’s Sirius, and Google Voice recognition.

Many companies have their own proprietary system specialized in their niche.

With Alme’s processing power,combining voice recognition and NL P (natural language processing) Your staff for  customer service, requests, and patient needs is multiplied and amplified many times.

By 2015, Gartner predicts that half of online customer self-service search activities will be via virtual assistant – that's just two years away. Companies will have a fire hose of patients coming at them – the smartest will know how to control and use it.

Every health facility and virtually every function within a company, wants better insight and greater confidence in understanding patient or provider needs, behavior, and preference. Which investments will give the greatest lift? Which processes or product improvements will create users that are loyal for life? Which touchpoints are triggers to grow share of market and yield increased efficiency and market share?

AMJMC

Virtual Health Assistants Poised to Revolutionize Healthcare Delivery - See more at: Technology continues to advance at such an incredible pace that it can be hard for many industries to keep up with the ways in which new systems and processes can help them be more effective. In this morning’s session, “Your Next Provider Will Be an Avatar,” presenter Thomas Morrow, MD, explained why it’s necessary for the healthcare industry to not only keep pace with technological innovations, but also to integrate these technologies into several aspects of care. - See more

The next revolutionary disruptive technology that needs to transform medicine, according to Dr Morrow, is the Virtual Health Assistant (VHA).   The VHA is a technology that is not only needed, but inevitable. There needs to be a sophisticated technology that is capable of cutting down on the high cost of medical care. Dramatic physician shortages—which are poised to only worsen—and the constant explosion of information that cannot be handled because of natural cognitive limitations are leading to less time for patients in the examination room. To prove this point, Dr Morrow mentioned that primary care physicians (PCPs), on average, take on 28% more patients than they are able to handle. Even worse, patients typically have only 27 seconds to explain their symptoms before being interrupted by their physician. Dr Morrow added a personal anecdote related to this statistic, telling the audience about how a patient he had been speaking to was having chest problems and went to see several doctors without having any improvement. The patient had been interrupted and misdiagnosed each time until Dr Morrow had actually stopped to listen to all of his symptoms and told him to ask his next doctor about potentially having an aneurysm, which turned out to be the case. The patient was admitted later that day. -

This may be one of those disruptive technologies that operate at the strategic level.

Here are some of the additional ways in which  VHAs will be able to transform the healthcare system:

• Managed Care Organizations: HEDIS and medication adherence improvements are the low hanging fruit right now.
• Disease management companies can utilize this technology to help patients better manage chronic conditions.
• Retail pharmacies can set medication reminders.
• Specialty pharmacies can use this technology for clinical assessments.
• Pharmacy benefit managers: can also use aspects of disease management and medication reminder programs.
• Pharmaceutical companies can use VHAs for patient recorded outcomes.
• Hospitals can use a variety of programs to reduce readmission rates.

The possibilities for VHAs in healthcare are endless. With the technology available at the disposal of patients, providers, and payers, it is essential to start incorporating these programs into daily life. With the potential for cost savings, no one can afford to ignore these technological advancements.   And as important as cost saving, better and more consistent outcomes may also be a by-product.