Numerous types of artificial intelligence (AI) have gained a substantial foothold in health care, including hospices, with conversational AI among them.

Conversational AI uses natural language processing and machine learning to develop virtual assistants and chatbots that can automate certain functions. Health care providers are using these systems to schedule appointments, for medication reminders, symptom assessments and for after-hours patient support.

The technology has many potential applications in home-based care, though risks do exist, according to American pediatrician, educator and author Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson. 

“In the home health care world, it’s incredible to think about AI making it seamless for people to ask about where their durable medical equipment is, to ask about where caregivers are, to ask about timing, to get refills, to ask and request help,” Swanson said in a keynote at the National Alliance for Care at Home’s Financial Summit in Chicago. “And if you have seamless intake with a person, then the person that you’ve employed could be in that perishable, important, meaningful interaction more.”

Swanson is an official spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and an adjunct professor at Stanford University.

The use of conversational AI in health care for the most part falls into two categories — delivery of remote health services and administrative assistance to health care providers, according to 2024 research published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Remote health care services can include patient support, care management, education, skills building and health behavior promotion, the study indicated. Providers are also using these systems to build efficiency and expand their reach when it comes to serving patients.

However, the technology has limitations, the study found. These include ethical challenges, legal and safety concerns, technical difficulties, user experience issues and societal and economic impacts.

With these risks and benefits in mind, the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2021 released guidelines titled Ethics & Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health. This report identifies ethical issues associated with AI in health care, six principles to ensure use of the technology remains beneficial and a framework for accountability for developers and users.

“While new technologies that use artificial intelligence hold great promise to improve diagnosis, treatment, health research and drug development and to support governments carrying out public health functions, including surveillance and outbreak response, such technologies must put ethics and human rights at the heart of its design, deployment and use,” the WHO report indicated.

As hospices adapt to the steady encroachment of AI in health care, they need to keep two considerations top of mind, according to Swanson — transparency and informed consent. Swanson defined “informed consent” to mean that patients received a detailed explanation of an intervention, with its potential risks and benefits, in a way patients can understand so they can make the best health care choices available to them.

“Increasingly, as this technology overcomes us, overwhelms us and helps us, we have to continue to be devotional to being transparent,” Swanson said at the conference. “You have to tell people what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. You have to give patients and families and caregivers choice whenever you can … We keep being deeply transparent, and we give people and garner true, informed consent.”