Phoenix-based Banner Health will begin offering its chatbot texting service, which answers emergency department patients' questions in real time, at its hospital in Payson, Ariz., Aug. 21, Payson Roundup reports.
Banner Payson Medical Center patients will be offered access to the chatbot when they register in the ED. They can send questions concerning, for example, the availability of lab or imaging results to the bot through text message. The service then pulls relevant information from the patient's EHR to text back answers.
Banner Health, a nonprofit health system that comprises 29 hospitals across Arizona and Colorado, launched the chatbot service in May and has been rolling it out at select hospitals, including North Colorado Medical Center in Greely. After offering the service for one month, patients that interacted with the chatbot had an average of 9.4 conversations with it during their ED stay, according to the report.