The Gemelli University Hospital Foundation has created a chatbot service that can answer patients’ questions on how to prepare for the endoscopic examination
Hi, I’m Eric, the virtual assistant of the Gemelli Polyclinic. How can I help you?. If you have to undergo a colonoscopy in Rome, you can try to talk about it first with the nice chatbot created by the Agostino Gemelli Irccs University Hospital Foundation within a service called Endo-chat. Chatbots (also known as conversation agents) are automatic systems that in the health sector also propose diagnostic hypotheses or treatment suggestions. The booming virtual assistant sector; it is estimated that the global market could reach 3.5 billion dollars in 2025. On a global level, opinions are still divided on their validity from a medical-scientific point of view.
How to prepare for the exam
For patients undergoing treatment at the Polyclinic, Eric provides information to better prepare for the colonoscopy, as told by the professor Guido Costamagnadirector of the UOC of Digestive Surgical Endoscopy of the Gemelli Polyclinic and full professor of General Surgery at the Catholic University: Patients who will have to undergo a colonoscopy can consult the virtual assistant Eric (who stands for Endoscopy robot for intelligent chatbot) to receive guidance on exam preparation. We firmly believe that this new Endo-chat service can improve the patient’s journey and preparation by being an integral part of our digital transformation.
The (clinical) importance of correct information
For the success of the exam, be informed about the fundamental procedure. In fact, during the examination, the colon must be cleaned, because this is the only way to carefully examine the walls, in order to find any lesions, inflammations or polyps. Bowel prep relevant for a high-quality colonoscopy explains Dr. Lucio PetruzzielloHead of Uos Endoscopy and Colorectal Cancer Screening at the Gemelli Polyclinic. Insufficient bowel preparation increases the risk of an incomplete colonoscopy and makes it necessary to re-examine the exam in the short term.
Guided tour or direct questions
The path was developed by Olympus in collaboration with Userbot – a leading company in the development of conversational AI platforms (technological partner), and Media for Health, an agency specialized in healthcare (commercial partner). The patient can choose whether to initiate it one guided tour or ask Eric specific questions. In the first case, the patient will be directed to the most suitable solution for intestinal washing who will take into account particular health conditions such as favism, Crohn’s disease or pregnancy.
The benefits for healthcare professionals
And we come to the key question on the healthcare staff front: how much can a digital service improve the way people work? This digital service meets the needs of patients, responds 24 hours a day and it helps to devote the time saved to other activitiesmaking the work of health care personnel more efficient responds Ariana Di Gemma, Endoscopy Coordinator of the Gemelli Polyclinic. At the base of an effective care process, communication certainly has a significant weight
.
The aid of artificial intelligence
Eric is a conversational artificial intelligence tool that allows you to create personalized and timely dialogues based on the user with whom he interacts, thanks to a platform trained to give increasingly precise information to patients. Le tecnologie di Natural Language Processing e Deep Learning through artificial neural networks, created for Eric, allow you to have conversations in natural language, learning automatically from interactions with users themselves. For example Eric can report what not to ingest before the exam or what to ingest before and after the exam and further information useful for patients. If Eric is unable to formulate a precise response for the patient, the same platform will forward the request to a healthcare professional. so that the patient can receive adequate assistance.
What do patients think
The technological innovation seems to meet the approval of patients. According to data from the Polyclinic, Eric was able to handle 94% of the questions on his own sent by patients, thus forwarding only the remaining 6% of requests to specialized human operators. 88% of those who used Eric rated the service as excellentwith an average conversation time between patient and virtual assistant of 2 and a half minutes.
May 6, 2022 (change May 6, 2022 | 11:33 am)
© Time.News