How care providers use virtual assistants to drive their business

Helping your care staff with a virtual assistant

Imagine a colleague who is always available and can immediately answer every question.

This is not a thought experiment. Such "colleagues" exist and are already used in various industries and professions. The term "colleague" is not quite accurate - it is a tool with which you communicate via speech and text. More specifically, we are talking about a virtual assistant.

Care is already influenced by new technologies, especially "artificial intelligence", or AI for short. The goal of AI is to support managers, office staff, and carers in various tasks such as quality assurance, process optimization, documentation and admin tasks.

Staff is to be supported, and not replaced. This is important, because the role of the person remains key. By using a virtual assistant, the quality of care can be improved, the workload of the team reduced, and time saved.

How does a virtual assistant work?

Well-known virtual assistants are Alexa and Siri. They are designed to interact with smart home and mobile devices to perform a wide range of tasks: answer questions, play music, create shopping lists or control household devices.

Virtual assistants typically use advanced AI technologies, such as machine learning and speech recognition, to have human-like conversations. For example, Alexa and Siri use AI to assist us in a targeted way. They are constantly learning by analyzing and evaluating vast amounts of data, allowing them to improve their replies and solve tasks, while elevating the quality of interactions.

How do virtual assistants differ from a search engine like Google?

A search engine crawls the internet for relevant information, while a virtual assistant engages in conversation and solves specific tasks.

The following are important differences between a virtual assistant and a search engine:

1. Interaction: A virtual assistant interacts directly with the user in natural language - whether via audio or text in a chat. A search engine is much more limited - it only provides search results for a query.
   
   
2. Purpose: A virtual assistant can serve one purpose or several. It can answer questions or take over tasks, for example admin or organizational tasks. A search engine, on the other hand, merely provides information or sources.
   
   
3. Personalization: A virtual assistant can provide personalized answers and recommendations based on the user's specific needs, while a search engine provides general information.
   
   
4. Context: A virtual assistant takes into account the context of the conversation and can tailor replies specifically to the user's needs, whereas a search engine does not consider context.
   
   
5. Learning ability: A virtual assistant learns from interactions in order to improve over time, while a search engine only evaluates web pages and displays corresponding search results.

7 ways that care providers use virtual assistants

1. Answering questions on various topics
   
   
2. Creating texts for letters, templates, emails, reports or meeting minutes
   
   
3. Analyzing data to extract information, visualize or sort data, or provide recommendations
   
   
4. Summarizing notes to highlight the most important information
   
   
5. Conducting research on various topics
   
   
6. Translating texts from one language into another
   
   
7. Support with problems or decisions

Real-life examples for care

Whether care-related expertise, data protection guidelines or other topics such as health, nutrition, law, science and many more - a virtual assistant provides a helpful answer to all these questions within seconds.

For example:

1. The manager needs a catchy description for her dom care service to use on the company website. She asks her virtual assistant for help: "I need a catchy description for my home care service. We focus on first-class care, personal relationships, and transparency. Can you write me a short description of about 200 words?"

2. The care home manager wants to write a memo for the staff reminding them of the risk of termination when using WhatsApp for work and the main reasons why it is forbidden. He asks: "Can you write a memo for me about the risks of using WhatsApp in our company and that it is forbidden? Include that termination is the consequence following non-compliance."

3. Susan wants to write a newsletter for the relatives of the residents in the care home, focusing on the latest news, activities, and events: “Please write a newsletter for relatives of our care home residents, covering the following topics: …”

4. The care supervisor is looking for a useful template to quickly summarize and share notes from staff meetings. She asks: "Can you please send me a template for an efficient summary of staff meetings?"

5. A carer wants to refresh her knowledge of what to keep in mind when helping a client shower: "Hi Wilma, what is important to keep in mind when helping clients take a shower?"

6. Paul wants to know how he can improve his CQC rating: “Wilma how can I improve my CQC rating?”. Paul also wants an overview of the main criteria the CQC assesses during an inspection to share with the team. He follows up: "Thanks, can you also add the main criteria the CQC assesses during an inspection?”

Take advantage of virtual assistants for hands-on support

Ultimately, technology is not a replacement for the human element of care. Robots cannot replace a hearty laugh, a supportive hand or a gentle caress.

However, technology can be used in a targeted way to provide relief, save time, and improve order and satisfaction - for the office team, management, carers, clients and their relatives.

In this article, we provided real-life examples showing how virtual assistants are a valuable support for care providers and help streamline processes, relieve staff, and improve the quality of care.

Virtual assistants are already being used today - not by research institutes or universities, but by dom care providers and care homes. If you this is interesting, try out the virtual assistant "Wilma", developed by nooa. You can register for a free account here: try Wilma, the virtual assistant.

We are happy to share our expertise on how to successfully use a virtual assistant. Contact us at any time via our contact form, email (hello@nooa.app) or phone (0330 818 8540).