Conversational Agents in Healthcare: Where Are We Going?

Abstract

A very important pillar of humanity is unequivocally the healthcare sector which, however, seems to lack going the digitalized path, as for example stated on the Dutch-German Health Conference in 2018, by simply comparing costs of information systems in relation to total expenditures for different industries: the healthcare sector’s spending of 4 % appears rather low opposed to the financial sector with 12 % in 2015. In particular, Germany has so far neglected this realm as revealed by a research study of the Bertelsmann Stiftung ranking Germany sixteenth out of 17 countries. The purpose of this article is to present an archetype model that reveals the impact of digital assistants on the frontline service encounter. The assignment of established technological devices to the conceptual archetype framework exhibits the current state of the art to utilize and reshape modern health care service delivery. In doing so this article also elaborates the impact of the service creation and provides a future outlook of the industry.