Intelligent Conversational Agents in Healthcare: Hype or Hope?

New developments in healthcare require an increased disease self-management of patients. Intelligent digital assistants equipped with a conversational user interface are intended to support patients in this challenging task by providing reminders, answering questions, or supporting in self-monitoring tasks. In this paper, we study the potentials of intelligent conversational agents in healthcare. We realized three systems for three different use cases (patient education, disease management, self anamnesis). Based on these implementations and experiences with usability tests, we performed an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) using a questionnaire. The results show that conversational agents used in healthcare applications can be helpful. However, they have to be integrated into the healthcare process, supporting also the interaction between the healthcare team and a patient. In order to be attractive for a long-term usage, the scope of operation should autonomously adapt to the current health situation of a patient to provide relevant functionality as needed.