Automated Empathy

As medical and technological spheres continue to work together, patient care is become more streamlined. This has been phenomenal for medicine. Technology has allowed for faster care, more precise testing, and more accurate and targeted disease research than ever before. The newest health technology innovation, however, is a little more controversial. Startup companies such as Healthloop have created automated patient care, which includes automated empathy from physicians.

The reason this technology was formed is that many physicians have a significant number of patients in their care. When every patient wants to contact his or her doctor, physicians can get overwhelmed. Automated empathy is specifically for patients that are no longer in the doctor’s care, but still want to keep in touch. The system consists of customizable email templates that doctors can email to patients directly. Doctors are able to use the templates already in the email system, or write their own templates to make the communication more personable.

Some think that automated empathy is a cold way to operate, however it is doing amazing things for medical providers. During their recovery, patients receive daily follow-up emails and reminders from their physician, instead of experiencing communication that is less frequent. All responses can be tracked through an online health portal, and patients can access this health portal as well to ask questions and schedule further appointments.

The emails are meant to create an empathetic connection between doctor and patient, and to make patients certain they are getting the best care possible. It also has other benefits, such as cutting down on the rate of readmission through doctors getting information about a patient’s condition through responses to these automated emails. This cuts down on the money being spent on patient readmission, which means that such funds can be concentrated in another area in the healthcare sphere.

There are, of course, concerns being voiced by patients and experts alike that doctors will come to rely too much on this automated technology, and all the personability will be taken out of healthcare. Doctors must keep in mind that the best way to talk to patients is through face-to-face communication. However, automated empathy is already doing great things in healthcare. It will be exciting to see where such technology goes in the future.

For more information about this new healthcare technology, read this article on automated empathy from Healthcare Business Tech.