Healthwave launches CareBot with COVID-19 Symptom Assessment Check

The COVID-19 crisis is really taking hold and putting pressure on our health service. With that in mind, Healthwave, Ireland’s leading digital pharmacy service, has developed and launched CareBot, a virtual assistant that uses AI and natural language processing to process prescription orders and other health-related queries.  The CareBot also features an online assessment tool that will indicate whether the user is potentially eligible for COVID-19 testing thereby potentially reducing calls to GP’s.

Built last week by Healthwave founder, pharmacist and coder, Shane O’Sullivan, the CareBot was initially created to assist the Healthwave pharmacy team in managing the increased volume of orders and enquiries due to COVID-19. In its first four days of operation, 80% of calls and texts to the pharmacy were transitioned through the CareBot, freeing up significant time which allowed pharmacists to talk directly with patients needing urgent care, to manage prescriptions and ensure medication was delivered to patients as quickly as possible.

This week, in response to a surge in queries, Healthwave pharmacists added a COVID-19 symptom assessment feature to CareBot so patients can check if they are eligible for testing. The new COVID-19 feature could also be implemented in GP surgeries who are looking to prioritise phone callers. The COVID-19 symptom assessment was designed using the latest assessment pathway issued by the HPSC on 25/03/2020 and will continually be updated to reflect the most recent government testing criteria. The easy to use tool gives users an opportunity to assess online whether they will qualify for testing under the new guidelines and what next steps they need to take.

The technology is being made freely available by Healthwave to GP’s nationwide who may find it helpful in managing increased call volumes due to COVID-19 test requests.

Healthwave Founder, Managing Director and creator of the CareBot Shane O’Sullivan said “Turning to technology to manage surges in demand for healthcare was the obvious solution to me. We’ve seen it work so well in other industries. our engineer and I spent a weekend coding CareBot, a virtual, pharmacist-trained, assistant and within a week it became indispensable at a time when Healthwave was receiving almost two and a half times more enquiries than usual,  and transitioning over 10,000 patients from in-store to our delivery service”.

O’Sullivan added, “CareBot has relieved a lot of pressure on the pharmacy team since we went live, prioritising patients in most need. We think it can help others too, which is why we are delighted to make the CareBot technology available to interested GP’s in Ireland free of charge. We can assist with getting the CareBot technology up and running on their websites and will continue to add functionality to the CareBot over the coming days and weeks and welcome suggestions on how to improve the service. We also believe the HSE could look at integrating technology like CareBot into their Healthlink referral pathways to streamline the testing process.”

For GP’s interested in using the CareBot technology to assist with triaging COVID-19 calls, Healthwave has a CareBot Configurator page at https://healthwave.ie/careBot-for-gp for GP practices.

How CareBot works:

Using any device (mobile or desktop) patients log on to Healthwave.ie, click on the CareBot and follow the step by step instructions.

Depending on the request, CareBot can access a query, pass the request directly to Healthwave pharmacists and speed up the process whether it’s a prescription order, price query or MED1 form printout.

CareBot will gather the patient’s contact information if the pharmacist needs to get in touch and allows Healthwave to send order updates and tracking numbers when they dispatch the medication.

To use the COVID-19 Self Assessment Tool, users click on the link and complete the questionnaire, following the step by step instructions.