If you've been following the trends over the past year, you've likely heard that the healthcare industry is on the cutting edge of Voice User Interface (VUI) technology. VUI is an exciting breakthrough for healthcare professionals that uses speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions.
Today's interactive VUI technology enables hospitals, health practices, clinics, and insurance companies to reach out to their entire patient population – or a select group – automatically, instead of staff members having to make individual phone calls.
But the advantages of VUI extend far beyond simple conveniences for a physician, nurse, or healthcare professional's saved phone call. The technology can enhance the improvement of patient care, with the most significant benefit for patients being its potential to shape patient behavior and promote more personalized health practices.
VUI is already being used to help patients stay engaged after leaving the hospital or physician's office – keeping them on track with their prescribed care plan. Here are three examples of how VUI is changing the voice of healthcare for the better:
Whether it's to prompt patients to schedule appointments for vital screenings, help them prepare for a procedure, so they feel more informed and less anxious, or ensure they're recovering well after surgery, VUI can help to engage patients outside of the clinical setting. The result will be more positive health outcomes on a scale that would be impossible due to time restrictions with existing hospital and clinical staff.
As the technology becomes more sophisticated, there is a growing focus on tone, inflection, and other elements that mimic natural conversation to more effectively shape behaviors or calm the nerves of people anxious about a procedure. The ultimate goal is to provide the most "human" experience so that patients feel like they're conversing with a real human – making those cringe-worthy "robo-calls" from a healthcare provider a thing of the past.
While VUI was not necessarily built for the healthcare industry, it can definitively be designed to meet the specific needs of hospitals, health practices, and physicians. Essential aspects of VUI voice design are the complexity and humanness of the responses that can be crafted. Voice designers think about the texture and rhythm of the words to ensure patients have a more "human" interaction.
Once the "conversation" directions are mapped out, a voice actor records the responses, and a tone is chosen that best fits the need. For example, the sound of a call used for smoking cessation to encourage people to stop smoking might be different from a tone that is trying to schedule a patient's colonoscopy.
As providers look for innovative ways to drive better outcomes, the healthcare industry is predicted to see a surge in voice-driven patient communications. With VUI, healthcare providers can make the best use of their time and resources, while still ensuring patients receive optimal personalized care. Such attentive and thorough patient care using artificial human responses represents a new horizon of healthcare.
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