From Symptom Checkers to Smart Chatbots: The Role of AI in Virtual Care

Summary of Presentation: From Symptom Checkers to Smart Chatbots: The Role of AI in Virtual Care

This presentation, delivered by Andre Riberio, Chief Technology Officer at Healthily, explores the transformation of virtual care through the integration of AI technologies, focusing on the development from symptom checkers to intelligent chatbots.

• Introduction: The session began with scenarios illustrating common healthcare challenges faced by families, showcasing how symptom misinterpretations can lead to unnecessary stress and medical expenses.
• Technological Advancements: The presentation highlighted developments at Healthily, including the creation of a smart symptom checker powered by AI and a comprehensive in-house medical database. The system utilizes Bayesian models for accurate assessments.
• AI Systems: The integration of natural language processing (NLP) with machine learning in healthcare was discussed, with an emphasis on ensuring safety and leveraging Bayesian inference for clinical reasoning. They are trialing new products based on retrieval-augmented generation models to enhance conversational capabilities.
• System Architecture: Riberio detailed Healthily's architecture that routes user inputs through NLP engines, clinical reasoning engines, and flow clinical logic to ensure precise and context-aware guidance.
• Challenges and Solutions: The focus was on improving chatbot reliability and clarity, managing multiple user symptoms, and ensuring safe triage via AI-driven decision-making processes. They are building guardrails to ensure model safety and planning to transition symptom checkers to class 2 medical devices.
• Future Directions: Plans include enhancing real-world applicability through partnerships with healthcare insurers and enhancing user interaction by shifting from traditional symptom checkers to fully conversational chatbots.

The presentation concluded with an open session for questions, discussing user engagement preferences and the potential for further integrating these AI systems into standard care pathways to improve accessibility and responsiveness of healthcare services.

This is the end of the AI-generated content.

As digital transformation reshapes healthcare, virtual care has rapidly evolved from a niche convenience to a foundational element of modern health systems. This talk explores the accelerating rise of telemedicine, remote monitoring, and AI-powered self-care tools—unpacking the trends, challenges, and opportunities that define the future of virtual care.

At the forefront of this shift is Healthily, a pioneering healthtech platform redefining how people access, understand, and manage their health. Through its medically-validated AI symptom checker, self-care libraries, smart health tracking tools, and an in-development chatbot that lets users get guidance through everyday medical questions, Healthily empowers users to take informed action—even before they speak to a clinician. In doing so, it supports early intervention, reduces strain on healthcare systems, and enhances the overall quality of care.

This session will delve into Healthily's unique approach to blending clinical expertise with cutting-edge technology, its mission to deliver safe, personalized guidance at scale, and how it aims to bridge the gap between self-care and professional care—paving the way for a more proactive, inclusive, and human-centric future of virtual health.