Patient intake is a crucial aspect of telemedicine that involves the collection of information from patients before they receive medical services. This process helps healthcare providers to better understand their patients’ medical history and current health status, enabling them to provide personalized and effective medical care.

The significance of patient intake in telemedicine cannot be overstated. This process helps ensure that patients receive the right care at the right time, reducing the risk of misdiagnosis or ineffective treatment. Additionally, it enables healthcare providers to have a more comprehensive view of a patient’s health status, including any chronic conditions or allergies, which can help inform decision-making and improve overall care outcomes. Overall, patient intake plays a critical role in enhancing the quality of telemedicine services and improving patient outcomes.

For quite some time, patient intake in telemedicine used to be a costly and time-consuming process that required the development of custom software solutions. However, with the advent of cloud-based solutions like Azure Health Bot, it is now much easier to streamline processes in healthcare. 

Before the era of health bots, patient intake in telemedicine was characterized by the need for healthcare providers to hire developers to build and maintain custom software. This process was often time-consuming and required significant resources, both in terms of money and personnel. The custom software that was developed was often complex and difficult to use, which could pose significant challenges for healthcare providers and their patients.

The maintenance of these systems was a constant concern, as software updates and security patches needed to be applied regularly to keep the system running smoothly. This created an additional burden for healthcare providers, who had to dedicate time and resources to ensuring that their customer intake software was up-to-date and secure. The limitations and challenges associated with the traditional approach to customer intake in telemedicine made it difficult to provide efficient and effective medical services to their patients.

Health bots use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to understand and respond to patient inquiries, making it easier for healthcare providers to collect the information they need from their patients. Business analysts can work with health bots to design conversational flows and integrate them with existing systems, streamlining the patient intake process and reducing the time and cost required for manual data entry.

Health bots can handle routine tasks like collecting patient information, freeing up healthcare providers to focus on providing personalized medical care. Additionally, health bots can provide patients with quick and convenient access to medical services, reducing the need for in-person visits and improving overall patient satisfaction.

Some of the key features designed to improve the patient intake process include:

• Pre-built conversational flows

• Integration with electronic medical records (EMRs)

• Secure and compliant data management tools

These features help to ensure that patient intake is conducted in a secure and efficient manner, while also providing patients with a positive and convenient experience. 

Some of the most popular solutions that we have successfully worked with are:

• Azure Health Bot

• Infermedica

• MedChat App

• ApiMedic

• Ada

The ideal solution for most healthcare providers would be the one that requires little to no coding and does not require performing complex integrations – a “plug and play” product that is easy to implement and use. Based on these parameters, Azure Health Bot offers one of the most versatile sets of tools applicable for most patient intake use cases:

• Azure Health Bot is an exceptionally user-friendly graphic editor that helps create trees of questions as easily as drawing flowcharts in apps like Visio;

• If the customer’s project is based on Microsoft cloud solutions, using Azure Health Bot reduces the need for external integrations and vendors, which in turn helps ensure better security. By the way, here’s a step-by-step guide on setting up Azure Health Bot to automate patient workflow, which doesn’t require any coding;

• Azure Health Bot offers an out-of-the-box integration with Infermedica which helps seamlessly retrieve and process medical data;

• The API of the product is very straightforward and user-friendly when it comes to handling patient responses and adding complex logic;

• The costs for the bot can be partially covered by Azure credits;

• It is fully compliant with all existing health data protection regulations.

Reduced Cost and Time

Health bots can automate routine tasks and reduce the need for manual data entry, saving time and reducing the cost of patient intake. By using a health bot, healthcare providers can free up valuable resources that can be redirected to more critical tasks.

Increased Efficiency and Effectiveness

Health bots can provide patients with quick and accurate information, improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the customer intake process. They provide immediate responses to patients’ questions and concerns, significantly reducing the wait time. In addition, health bots can collect and push medical history information directly into the EHR, making it easier for healthcare providers to access and use this information during appointments.

Improved Patient Experience

Health bots can offer a convenient and user-friendly way for patients to provide information and ask questions, improving the overall customer experience. By using a health bot, patients can engage in a conversation with a virtual assistant at any time, from anywhere, without the need for a phone or in-person visit. Moreover, health bots would only ask questions that are relevant to the patient interacting with them. For example, if a patient indicates that they do not have any allergies, the bot will not ask them a follow-up question such as  “Please let us know what you are allergic to”, and vice versa. This flexibility and accessibility can help to increase patient satisfaction and promote a positive experience for the patient.

Let’s take a look at a few cases where health bots can significantly speed up and streamline patient intake.

Pre-appointment Screening

Health bots can be used to screen patients for symptoms and medical history before they schedule an appointment. It is quite easy to set up such a bot, even if you don’t have coding skills. 

• Triage and handoff: extend the built-in symptom checker and transition the conversations to a live nurse;

• Booking appointments: allow users to schedule an appointment with a healthcare provider using FHIR;

Symptom Checker

Health bots can provide patients with information about their symptoms and suggest the next steps for medical care. For example, users can undergo COVID-19 Triage by checking their symptoms with a bot based on CDC triage protocols.

Medical History Collection

Health bots can collect and store medical history information from patients, making it easier for healthcare providers to access and use this information during appointments.

FAQs

Health FAQs can help patients easily assess their condition according to specific protocols such as CDC guidelines for COVID-19. 

Back to Work protocols

Symptom screening checklists for COVID-19 and other epidemic diseases help employees easily check if it is safe for them to return to work

Eligibility
Health bots can help assess the eligibility of patients for particular vaccinations, donation programs, and clinical trials. They can also be used to collect electronic consent.

• Vaccine Eligibility: assess COVID-19 vaccine eligibility based on CDC information;

• Plasma Donation: check if a user is eligible for plasma donation, and find the closest plasma collection center;

• Clinical Trials Matching: matching patients to clinical trials, based on patient clinical info and trial eligibility criteria.

Vaccination

• COVID-19 Vaccine FAQs;

• Answer FAQs on the COVID-19 vaccine based on content from CDC;

• Flu Vaccination;

• Answer FAQs on Flu vaccines based on content from Providence and CDC.

Healthcare Insurance

Health bots can assist users n updating their insurance information via a simple conversation.

Provider Lookup

Health bots can help find the right healthcare provider closest to the user's location.

Screenings and Control

Health bots help streamline general screening for a variety of diseases and conditions.

• Quality of Life SF-36: assess the patient’s health-related quality of life by self-reporting via RAND 36-Item Health Survey;

• CDC HRQoL-14: assess the patient's self-reported quality of life through the Healthy Days Measure questionnaire;

• Mental health screener: share the PHQ-SADS mental health screener with patients through your bot;

• KDQOL-36™: assess the quality of life of patients with kidney disease;

• Asthma Scale: measure asthma control in children using Pediatric Asthma Symptom Scale;

• FINDRISC: identify individuals with high type 2 diabetes risk.

Health bots like Azure Health Bot provide a powerful solution for leveraging patient intake in telemedicine. As the use of health bots continues to grow, healthcare providers and innovators are encouraged to consider adopting these solutions as a way to improve efficiency and effectiveness in their patient intake processes. With the many benefits offered by health bots, they are likely to play an increasingly important role in telemedicine and healthcare in the years to come.

Not sure if Azure Health Bot is what you need? Interested in other ways to streamline your patient intake? Reach out to book a free consultation – we would love to help!