Chatbots are helpful features for healthcare websites and customer support. They increase client engagement and provide quick responses to common queries. However, your chatbot should follow HIPAA standards if you’re handling protected health information (PHI).
Let’s review your options for HIPAA-compliant chatbots.
Top 5 HIPAA-Compliant Chatbots:
1. Birdeye
Birdeye is a trusted online reputation management platform with thousands of satisfied user reviews. Its AI chatbot, Robin, is just one of its various messaging products and integrates with other Birdeye products for SMS, mass texting, and online surveys. While the platform doesn’t discuss its security features in detail, you can view its business associate agreement (BAA) on its website.
Birdeye’s Robin AI provides:
- Real-time chat for virtual consultations
- Client engagement through text leads even when customers have left your site
- Easy funneling of web chat conversations into a single inbox
- Auto-response templates to free up your live chat agents
- Automated replies for off-business hours and when live chat agents are busy
- Automatic web forms that capture customers’ names and phone numbers before each chat begins
Price per month:
Customized pricing
2. Freshchat
Freshchat by Freshworks helps you improve customer experiences with Freddy AI. It can converse in 33 languages and reply to your customers in real time in their language. Moreover, Freshworks supports HIPAA compliance in its chatbot by offering a BAA with covered entities and business associates. It provides a secure operating environment with restricted access, a unified authentication system, data sanitization, and end-point security.
Freshchat allows you to:
- Truncate (shorten or limit) electronic protected health information (ePHI) in patient conversations to prevent the exposure of sensitive data
- Take bulk action on multiple conversations like resolve, edit, or delete
- Respond with canned answers to usual questions
- Use Freshchat on the web, mobile apps, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other popular chat messengers
- View and analyze campaign metrics from a dashboard
- Buy additional Freshbot sessions
Price per month:
- Free
- Growth: $19 per agent
- Pro: $49 per agent
- Enterprise: $79 per agent
3. TeamSupport
Are you looking for HIPAA compliance in chatbots? TeamSupport will sign a BAA with you. The platform boasts high-security standards with enforced session timeouts, two-factor authentication, mandatory password resets, user restrictions, and email encryption. TeamSupport is a complete client engagement platform with live chat, SMS, and chat analytics. But it also includes a straightforward chatbot add-on in its Enterprise and Complete plans.
TeamSupport’s self-service chatbot can:
- Mimic human conversations and understand complex requests
- Automatically translate over 100 languages (powered by Google)
- Help you label or categorize chats
- Reroute customers to a knowledge base for accurate and helpful information
Price per month:
- Enterprise: $39 per agent
- Complete: $49 per agent
4. Intercom
A helpdesk and AI chatbot in one, Intercom can keep your patients happy. It offers one AI-enhanced workspace where you can view your inbox, tickets, and help center. Its chatbot, Fin, converses in 43 languages, asks clarifying questions, and integrates with Intercom’s live help desk for seamless support. Fin usage is paid separately based on each satisfactory resolution. As a HIPAA-compliant chatbot provider, Intercom enters a BAA upon request via Messenger or email.
Intercom’s Fin AI offers:
- Quick responses using various sources: Intercom articles, Zendesk help center, public URLs, PDFs, and other text-based documents
- The best answers are based on the client’s location, persona, or subscription plan
- Customized answers that incorporate external data like a client’s billing data and rich media
- Instant hand-offs to live customer support for complex problems
- Data analytics for chatbot performance
- An easy way to monitor and improve Fin’s conversations
Price per month:
- Essential: $39 per agent
- Advanced: $99 per agent
- Expert: $139 per agent
- Fin chatbot: $0.99 per resolution
5. Dokbot by Doxy.me
Dokbot differs from the others in the list since its primary use is for data collection. Created by Doxy.me, a telemedicine platform, the HIPAA-compliant chatbot uses AI conversations to gather healthcare data from patients. Researchers and healthcare professionals can send Dokbot forms to clients. Clients fill out consent forms, intake forms, assessments, and satisfaction surveys with the help of the chatbot. With Dokbot, data collection can be done faster with better accuracy. To get a BAA, you must sign up for a free Dokbot account and click on the link to the BAA.
Dokbot lets you:
- Create and send healthcare forms to patients
- View the status of an assessment (pending, activated, done) in the Dokbot Portal so you can easily follow up with patients
- Change email settings so you can get notified of completed assessments
Price per month:
- Free
Why HIPAA Compliance Is Essential for Healthcare Chatbots
It’s easy to integrate chatbots into your mobile apps and websites. However, compliance with specific regulations should take priority over convenience. Chatbots that are HIPAA-compliant provide security features that regular chatbots lack, and choosing to use the latter can potentially jeopardize the privacy and confidentiality of patient information. Without advanced security measures, your sensitive health data may become even more vulnerable to cyberattacks, staff negligence, and unexpected data loss due to natural disasters.
HIPAA requires that individual data remain accessible and private only to authorized persons. When a covered entity or business associate fails to handle PHI securely according to standards, it could make the patients lose their trust, sparking concerns over their safety. Fines and other legal penalties will also be imposed on those who violate the HIPAA law.
Choose HIPAA-Compliant Chatbots for Patient Engagement
This simple guide to healthcare chatbots should help you choose the best chatbot for your healthcare business. The conversational support tools help increase client engagement and retention rates. More importantly, they help you provide quality healthcare.
Chatbots and HIPAA compliance always go hand in hand. By choosing HIPAA-compliant solutions, you demonstrate care toward patients. Chatbots that comply with regulations such as HIPAA help lessen data security concerns and avoid the legal consequences that could lead to loss of trust and damaged reputation.
