Chatbots are helpful features for healthcare websites and customer support. They increase client engagement and provide quick responses to common queries. However, the best healthcare chatbots should follow HIPAA standards when handling protected health information (PHI).
Let’s review your options for HIPAA compliant chatbots below.
Top 5 HIPAA-Compliant Chatbots
1. 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
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. 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
HIPAA Compliance Guide for Healthcare Chatbots
Why is compliance important for HIPAA chatbots
HIPAA-compliant AI chatbots provide security features that other live chat tools lack, and choosing to use the latter can potentially jeopardize the privacy and confidentiality of patient information. Without advanced security measures, sensitive health data may become even more vulnerable to cyberattacks, staff negligence, and unexpected data loss.
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, it can spark concerns over safety and data privacy. Entities proven to have violated HIPAA could face significant fines and penalties.
HIPAA compliance for AI chatbots key requirements
The best healthcare chatbots that abide by HIPAA rules all adhere to the following key requirements:
- Technical and physical safeguards: The healthcare organization must deploy HIPAA chatbots alongside sufficient technical and physical safeguards such as role-based access, audit logs, and device monitoring.
- Business Associate Agreement (BAA): The third-party healthcare chatbot provider and the covered entity must agree and sign a BAA to ensure that PHI remains protected in accordance with HIPAA standards.
- Data transparency: Organizations using healthcare chatbots must provide patients with a comprehensive privacy policy stating the type or nature of data the AI chatbot will collect, the purpose of its data collection, etc.
- Robust encryption: HIPAA compliant chatbots must utilize strong military-grade encryption protocols to safeguard PHI in transit and at rest.
- Ongoing compliance monitoring: Healthcare organizations, together with their third-party AI chatbot providers, must continuously monitor and adapt to evolving compliance standards, vigilantly assessing the effectiveness of existing safeguards.
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.
