{"id":396755,"date":"2026-04-13T20:00:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/396755\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T20:00:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:00:39","slug":"hospitals-launch-chatbots-creating-another-funnel-for-patient-intake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/396755\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospitals launch chatbots, creating another funnel for patient intake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"author-bio\">Katie Palmer covers telehealth, clinical artificial intelligence, and the health data economy \u2014 with an emphasis on the impacts of digital health care for patients, providers, and businesses. You can reach Katie on Signal at palmer.01.<\/p>\n<p>Every day, more than 40 million people ask ChatGPT about health care, according to OpenAI. They\u2019re asking questions about diet, exercise, insurance \u2014 and in some cases, serious symptoms that would typically get discussed on a 911 call or in a doctor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p>For some health systems, that\u2019s creating an imperative. A small number of hospitals are trying to recapture some of those clinical conversations from commercial large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. They\u2019re implementing their own patient-facing chatbots, ones that draw directly from their existing medical records and can funnel patients toward care in their own system.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hartford HealthCare this week will launch PatientGPT, a chatbot engineered by clinical AI company K Health, to its patients in Connecticut. Two health systems \u2014 California-based Sutter Health and Reid Health, serving Indiana and Ohio \u2014 have announced pilot versions of Emmie, the chatbot built by medical record mammoth Epic. The list is likely to grow rapidly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-text\">STAT+ Exclusive Story<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-login\">Already have an account? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/login\/\" data-stat-login=\"\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker login cta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"restricted-content-breaker-bg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stat-plus-breaker-bg.png\" alt=\"STAT+\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"stat-plus-logo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/stat\/images\/stat-plus-logo-white.svg\" alt=\"STAT+\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\tThis article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers<br \/>\n\t\t\t\tUnlock this article \u2014 and get additional analysis of the technologies disrupting health care \u2014 by subscribing to STAT+.<\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-content-breaker-wrapper-cta mobile\">Already have an account? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/login\/\" data-stat-login=\"\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker login cta mobile\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tIndividual plans<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tGroup plans<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" class=\"stat-button view-all\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker view all plans\" aria-label=\"View All Plans\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">View All Plans<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"restricted-content-text\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTo read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+.\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/stat-plus\/\" class=\"stat-button restricted-button\" data-stat-paywall-cta=\"breaker subscribe cta 1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Palmer covers telehealth, clinical artificial intelligence, and the health data economy \u2014 with an emphasis on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[218,103,397,1730,396,61,60,2369],"class_list":{"0":"post-396755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-health-care","11":"tag-health-tech","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-stat"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}