The East London NHS Foundation Trust is currently piloting Ali – a new EBO Virtual Assistant. Ali is helping patients get answers to simple queries about their care and can be accessed via the trust’s website on any browser, via desktop, smartphone, laptop or tablet.
Ali enables patients who want control over their appointments and access their medical history without any bureaucratic hurdles.
Meet Ali
Ali is currently being trialed within the Psychotherapy Department, Newham Child Development Service and Dunstable CMHT, but it is set to increase in scope by the end of the year. Patients can book, cancel and reschedule appointments, ask questions about basic clinical care and send queries about their upcoming appointments. To chat with Ali, patients need to simply visit the ELFT website and click on the green Click to Chat button.
Using Ali to manage appointments
When it comes to communicating with their healthcare provider, patients need an omnichannel solution. As an advocacy organisation, East London NHS Foundation Trust is offering this channel in addition to traditional communication channels such as the telephone and in-person visits.
The Virtual Assistant communciates in English however, the trust is working on integrating more languages into the system in order to serve patients and communities better.
When managing appointments, Ali will ask patients for their NHS Number and date of birth or first name, surname, date of birth and postcode. In order to ensure maximum safety and security, chats are also secured and encryptedend-to-end.
If patients need additional help, they can ask Ali to connect them with a human agent. AI is not intended to replace but augment human capability thus we see a seamless transition between AI and human capabilities.
Ali’s capabilities
East London NHS Foundation Trust patients can use Ali to:
- Manage appointments (view, reschedule, cancel)
- View appointment letters online
- Receive appointment reminders and notifications of changes
- Ask about appointment pre-requisites
- Find out about local transport links and parking information
- Check clinic opening times
- Ask about specific contact details for certain services
Virtual Assistants can help hospitals, clinics and trusts such as East London NHS Foundation Trust to maximise their resources and data, increase efficiency, improve processes, workflows and operations and boost patient and staff experience.
EBO’s CEO, Dr Gege Gatt, sums up AI’s role in the future of healthcare: “AI Virtual Assistants have significant potential to transform how society operates, and their use in the health sector is one of the most potentially valuable applications of this technology.”
EBO creates highly customisable Healthcare Virtual Assistants that offer your customers a service so seamless, that it is indistinguishable from the experience of interacting with your human resources. EBO’s AI solutions enable hospital staff to focus on solving more significant, complex issues.
