Cognitive Automation and Its Importance for Enterprises

Published on Sep 27, 2018

Updated on Jan 3, 2020

One of Japan’s leading insurance firms — Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance claims to have replaced 34 human tasks with IBM Watson (AI technology).

Cognitive automation is a subset of artificial intelligence that uses advanced technologies like natural language processing, emotion recognition, data mining, and cognitive reasoning to emulate human intelligence. In simple words, cognitive automation uses technology to solve problems with human intelligence.

Cognitive automation vs Robotic Process Automation

The main pillars of cognitive automation

Consider an automated home security system programmed to function based on millions of decisions. It may still encounter situations when it does not know what to do. Machines can make logical decisions in many unforeseen situations using cognitive neuroscience.

The technologies to make cognition-based decisions possible include natural language processing, text analytics, data mining, machine learning, semantic analytics, and more. The following table gives an overview of the technologies used in cognitive automation.

TECHNOLOGY	DESCRIPTION
Machine Learning	It involves improving a system’s performance by learning through real-time interactions and without the need for explicitly programmed instructions.
Data Mining	It is the process of finding meaningful correlations, patterns, and trends from data warehouses/repositories using statistical and mathematical techniques.
Natural Language Processing	NLP is a computer’s ability to communicate with humans in native languages.
Cognitive Reasoning	It is the process of imitating human reasoning by engaging in complex content and natural dialogues with people.
Voice Recognition	It is transcribing human voice and speech and translating it into text or commands.
Optical Character Recognition	It uses pattern matching to convert scanned documents into corresponding computer text in real-time.
Emotion Recognition	It is the understanding of a person’s emotional state during voice and text-based interactions.
Recommendation Engine	It is a framework for providing insights/recommendations based on different data components and analytics. For instance, Amazon was one of the first sites to use recommendation engines to make suggestions based on past browsing history and purchases.

Why is cognitive process automation important for enterprises?

Cognitive automation improves the efficiency and quality of computer-generated responses. In fact, cognitive processes are overtaking nearly 20% of service desk interactions. The following factors make cognitive automation next big enhancement for enterprise-level operations –

Cost-effective: Cognitive automation can help companies to save up to 50% of their total spending for FTE, and other related costs.
Operational Efficiency: Automation can enhance employee productivity, leading to better operational efficiency.
Increased accuracy: Such systems are able to derive meaningful predictions from a vast repository of structured and unstructured data with impeccable accuracy.
Facts-based decision making: Strategic business decisions drill down to facts and experiences. Combining both, cognitive systems offer next level competencies for strategic decision making.

4 benefits of cognitive automation for enterprises

Also read – Cognitive approach vs digital approach in Insurance

Applications of cognitive automation

End-to-end customer service

Enterprises can understand their customer journey and identify the interactions where automation can help. For example, Religare — a leading health insurance company incorporated NLP-powered chatbot into their operations and automated their customer-support and achieved almost 80% FTE savings. Processes like policy renewal, customer query ticket management, handling general customer queries at scale, etc. are possible for the company through chatbots.

Processing transactions

Reconciliation is a tedious yet crucial transaction process. Banking and financial institutions spend enormous time and resources on the process. Paper-based transactions, different time zones, etc. add to the complicacy of settling transactions. With human-like decision-making capabilities, cognitive automation holds a huge prospect of simplifying the transaction-related processes.

Claims processing

In insurance, claims settlement is a huge challenge as it involves reviewing policy documents, coverage, the validity of insured components, fraud analytics, and more. Cognitive systems allow making automated decisions in seconds by analyzing all the claims parameters in real-time.

Also read – How intelligent systems can settle claims in less than 5 minutes

Requirements

Deloitte’s report on how robotics and cognitive automation will transform the insurance industry states that soon, automation will replace 22.7 million jobs and create 13.6 million new jobs. However, not all operations can be automated. The following are the requirements for successfully automating processes.

Input sources: The input sources should be machine-readable, or needs to be converted into one. Also, there’s a limitation to the number of sources that the system can process for decision making. For instance, in an email management process, you cannot automate the resolution of every individual email.
Availability of the technology: Cognitive automation combines several technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, analytics, etc. Thus, all the technologies should be available to make automated processes functional.
Data availability: For the cognitive system to make accurate decisions, there should be sufficient data for modeling purposes.
Risk factor: Processes like underwriting and data reconciliation are good prospects of cognitive automation. However, based on the risk value and practical aspects, human intervention may be required to make the final decision.
Transparency & control: Cognitive automation is still in a nascent stage and humans may overturn machine-made decisions. Therefore, the system design needs to adhere to transparency and control guidelines.

Wrapping up

Cognitive systems are great for deriving meaningful conclusions from unstructured data. Many back and front office operations can be automated for improving efficiency, especially in consumer-facing functions to understand requirements and feedback. For instance, cognitive automation comes with powerful emotion recognition capabilities. It can help with making sense of customer tweets, social updates, through face recognition and analyzing texts.

Since cognitive automation solutions help enterprises to adapt quickly and respond to new information and insights, it is becoming crucial for customer-centric businesses. The following graph shows how important cognitive technology adoption is for businesses that focus on consumer centricity.

Customer centricity and cognitive technology adoption — *Source: Deloitte*

Also read – 5 Front office operations you can improve with AI

As healthcare becomes more patient-centric, the demand for efficient and personalized care continues to grow. One of the key technologies that have gained traction in this domain is Conversational UI (CUI) — a user interface where interactions occur through natural language, often with the help of chatbots. For developers, building a robust CUI in healthcare requires a balance of technical proficiency, understanding of the healthcare landscape, and empathy toward patient needs. Let’s explore how CUI can improve patient interactions through chatbots and what developers should consider during implementation.

Why Conversational UI is Gaining Popularity in Healthcare

From scheduling appointments to answering medical queries, healthcare chatbots have become vital tools for enhancing patient engagement and streamlining healthcare workflows. Conversational UIs enable these chatbots to interact with patients naturally, making them accessible even to non-tech-savvy users. By incorporating AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing), chatbots can now simulate human-like conversations, ensuring patients receive timely, relevant responses.

Image credit: https://www.analytixlabs.co.in/blog/ai-chatbots-in-healthcare/

Key Areas Where Chatbots Are Revolutionizing Healthcare

Appointment Scheduling and Reminders – Chatbots can automatically schedule appointments based on patient availability and send reminders before the visit, reducing no-show rates. For developers, this feature requires integration with hospital management systems (HMS) and calendar APIs. The challenge lies in ensuring secure and real-time data transfer while adhering to healthcare compliance standards like HIPAA.

Medical Query Resolution– Chatbots equipped with NLP can answer common patient questions related to symptoms, medications, and treatment plans. This reduces the burden on healthcare providers, allowing them to focus on more critical tasks. Developers working on this feature need to consider integrating medical databases, such as SNOMED CT or ICD-10, for accurate and up-to-date information.

Patient Monitoring and Follow-ups – Post-discharge, chatbots can monitor a patient’s condition by regularly asking for health updates (e.g., vital signs or medication adherence). Developers can integrate IoT devices, such as wearable health monitors, with chatbot platforms to collect real-time data, providing healthcare professionals with actionable insights.

Mental Health Support – Chatbots have shown promise in offering mental health support by providing patients with an outlet to discuss their feelings and receive advice. Building these chatbots involves training them on therapeutic conversational frameworks like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), ensuring they offer relevant advice while recognizing when a human intervention is required.

Key Considerations for Developers

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI Training

NLP plays a pivotal role in enabling chatbots to understand and process patient queries effectively. Developers must focus on the following:

Training Data: Start by gathering extensive datasets that include real-life medical queries and patient conversations. This ensures that the chatbot can recognize various intents and respond appropriately.

Multi-language Support: Healthcare is global, so building multi-lingual capabilities is critical. Using tools like Google’s BERT or Microsoft’s Turing-NLG models can help chatbots understand context in different languages.

Contextual Understanding: The chatbot must not just respond to individual queries but also maintain the context across the conversation. Developers can use contextual models that preserve the state of the conversation, ensuring personalized patient interactions.

2. Security and Compliance

Healthcare chatbots handle sensitive patient information, making security a top priority. Developers must ensure compliance with regulations such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the U.S. and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe. Key practices include:

Data Encryption: All communication between the chatbot and the server must be encrypted using protocols like TLS (Transport Layer Security).
Authentication Mechanisms: Implement two-factor authentication (2FA) to verify patient identity, especially for sensitive tasks like accessing medical records.
Anonymization: To avoid accidental data breaches, ensure that the chatbot anonymizes data where possible.

3. Seamless Integration with EHR Systems

For chatbots to be truly effective in healthcare, they must integrate seamlessly with Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. This requires a deep understanding of healthcare APIs like FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) or HL7. Developers should aim to:

Enable Real-time Updates: Ensure that chatbot interactions (e.g., new appointment schedules, and symptom checks) are instantly reflected in the patient’s EHR.
Avoid Data Silos: Ensure that all systems (EHR, chatbot, scheduling system) can communicate with each other, eliminating data silos that can lead to fragmented patient information.

4. Scalability and Performance Optimization

In healthcare, downtime can be critical. Developers need to ensure that chatbots are scalable and capable of handling thousands of patient interactions simultaneously. Using cloud-based platforms (AWS, Google Cloud) that offer auto-scaling capabilities can help. Additionally, performance optimization can be achieved by:

Caching Responses: Store frequently used responses (such as FAQs) in memory to speed up interaction times.
Load Balancing: Implement load balancers to distribute incoming queries across servers, ensuring no single server is overwhelmed.

Image Credit: https://www.analytixlabs.co.in/blog/ai-chatbots-in-healthcare/

Tools and Platforms for Building Healthcare Chatbots

Several tools and platforms can aid developers in building healthcare chatbots with conversational UIs:

Dialogflow (Google): Offers pre-built healthcare intents and integrates with Google Cloud’s healthcare APIs.
Microsoft Bot Framework: A scalable platform that integrates with Azure services and offers AI-driven insights.
Rasa: An open-source NLP tool that provides flexibility in creating highly customized healthcare bots.

Conclusion

Conversational UI in healthcare is transforming patient care by offering real-time, scalable, and personalized interactions through chatbots. However, for developers, building these systems goes beyond programming chatbots — it involves understanding the unique challenges of healthcare, from regulatory compliance to seamless integration with hospital systems. By focusing on NLP capabilities, ensuring security and privacy, and integrating with existing healthcare infrastructure, developers can create chatbots that not only enhance patient interaction but also alleviate the burden on healthcare providers.

References

NLP in Healthcare: Opportunities and Challenges
HIPAA Compliance for Chatbots

About the Author:

Shristi is a creative professional with a passion for visual storytelling. She recently transitioned from the world of video and motion graphics to the exciting field of product design at Mantra Labs. When she’s not designing, she enjoys watching movies, traveling, and sharing her experiences through vlogs.

Cognitive Automation and Its Importance for Enterprises

The main pillars of cognitive automation

Why is cognitive process automation important for enterprises?