The promise of artificial intelligence to increase enterprise efficiency – and profitability - has tantalized business owners and managers since the first AI programs appeared in the 1950s. But despite steady advances over the decades, AI technology has been slow to win broad-based acceptance in business and professional use.
Part of this reluctance has been because until recently AI technology was not mature enough to rely on for mission-critical applications. And part has been because it is hard for non-programmers to combine AI functionalities like machine learning and artificial neural networks with a practical front-end application.
Advances in machine learning technology over the years have made AI-enabled applications for business more practical and commonplace today. In healthcare, for example, many software companies offer to healthcare providers applications supporting AI-enhanced and AI-driven services for clinical and operational uses:
Part of the appeal of using artificial intelligence tools in your business is that you can create customized applications on top of them. You do this by creating a user interface that overlays and integrates with the underlying AI engine.
Until recently, though, the promise of building your own business AI applications has been the problem that has acted as a speed brake on the adoption of AI all along: building that user interface requires professional coding support. And that is where the potential cost benefits begin to disappear.
This article is not about ChatGPT, but you have probably heard about it. Briefly put, it is an AI overlay tool that uses natural language processing technology to let you communicate with the AI in a simple, conversational way. You can ask it questions, and it will reply to you in plain and perfect English. You can even have ChatGPT do some of your communicating to others for you – drafting a memo or an email, for instance.
One of its more recent improvements is that it can now code software programs for you.
ChatGPT is one example of a useful AI tool, but its front end still suffers from the problem we laid out above: programming its front end to interface seamlessly with its AI engine requires considerable programming expertise.
But what if you can do something similar – build your own software front end to harness the benefits of using Big Data – by yourself? You can. In this article we’ll show you some examples of how businesses are already relying on AI-based applications for internal purposes, and how you can do the same quickly and affordably by using a no-code program builder like Blaze. We will use healthcare, real estate, and professional services providers as examples.
Healthcare is a field in which successful patient outcomes depend on effective communication across multiple domains: for example, patient-to-physician, physician-to-specialist, medical professionals with administration, and providers with insurers. This makes healthcare one of the biggest opportunity areas for developing user-friendly business AI tools.
Chat-based AI engines can not only emulate human communication, but also to effectively “think” on their own. This has led many in the healthcare industry to consider ways to use it to improve the quality of patient experiences through artificial intelligence. Some of the emerging ideas include:
Making it easier for patients to communicate with their healthcare providers is an evergreen area for new application development, especially given the improvements in natural language processing. Sometimes referred to as “chatbot therapy,” applications that use chatbot-style interfaces can help patients find healthcare providers, describe their symptoms or medical needs, and schedule appointments.
For existing patients, AI-based apps can serve as virtual nurses, helping them stay on top of their medical appointments and to monitor their conditions at home. Other chat-based health applications include software to enable patient-assistive robots to interact with elderly patients, up to and including robots that use AI to monitor their physical and emotional well-being. Robotic AI applications exist today to help patients who are experiencing loneliness, isolation, dementia, or depression by providing cognitive and even emotional stimulation through interaction with the robot.
Chatbots have been gaining in popularity for several years, and they're finally at the point where some claim that they can now pass the “Turing Test” – that is, the best chatbots are now largely undistinguishable from communicating with real people.
How much benefit patients and providers can realize with artificial intelligence technology depends in part on how much patients are willing to put their trust into artificially intelligent chatbots. The good news here is that, if the underlying medical issue or question is not too serious, patients seem to trust AI even when they know they are dealing with a chatbot instead of a person.
The results of a recent study suggest that intelligent chatbots are becoming good enough at communication that when patients do not know whether they are dealing with a chatbot or a human being they guess incorrectly one-third of the time. This is true going both ways: patients were as likely to confuse a human for a chatbot as vice versa. The study also found that patient comfort with relying on intelligent chatbots is growing, although slowly: they are more likely to trust AI to handle administrative matters like appointment scheduling and answering low-risk questions about their health than to dispense medical advice.
Artificial intelligence technologies and applications will ultimately become an integral part of patient care in much the same way that patients and physicians have had to adapt to the Internet as a healthcare communication portal. In the same way that providers must eventually learn to use new technologies like online medical referral networking and remote monitoring technologies, they will need to learn how best to build AI into their diagnoses, treatment plans, and patient communications.
Early adopters of this new technology will be at a long-term advantage compared to providers who hold back and stick with older ways of talking with and educating their patients. Having a no-code programming option available to you puts you in a good position to be one of these early adopters.
Today’s widespread reliance on patient electronic health records and other forms of digital data can be a mixed blessing for physicians. It is true that the volumes of patient data available now make it possible to gain more information on their health conditions than ever before. It is also true, however, that the sheer volume of electronic information available for analysis can become “too much of a good thing”: analyzing it all can be difficult or impossible even for teams of people to effectively sort through.
Artificial intelligence tools can help to analyze this data quickly while simultaneously gleaning insights from it that human eyes might miss, or that human brains might not recognize. The challenge is to harness the power of AI-assisted patient diagnosis and treatment planning with an application that physicians find inviting to use.
Third-party AI-enabled applications for healthcare providers have been available for a while now. Healthcare facility executives use artificial intelligence applications to help with decision making, like doing service line analytics using demographic, economic, regional, and other data to predict what kinds of healthcare services local populations will require. They also help administrators to analyze and scorecard the performance of departments and even individual physicians.
Third-party AI healthcare apps help physicians in diagnosing diseases and conditions and in treatment planning. They are also helpful in medical research.
These third-party applications still have one drawback that, while it may have been unavoidable a few years ago, is unnecessary today: they require the user to adapt to the software interface with the AI, instead of letting the user create the interface. With no-code application creation tools now available that can readily interface with any AI engine, there is no need any longer to rely on software programmers outside your organization to guess what is best for you.
What can you do with AI-based, no-code healthcare applications? There are two short answers to this question. First, you can do anything with your own no-code healthcare applications that a third-party programmer can do for you. And second, you can do it faster and less expensively.
The place to start is to see what uses already exist for AI-enhanced applications. These are immediate candidates to consider for your own purposes. These include:
Healthcare applications are excellent for no-code programming because, especially when coupled with a chat-based AI, they make it easier for health professionals and patients alike to feel more at ease when prescribing and interacting with treatments and treatment plans that are becoming increasingly technological themselves. Simplifying the ability to create internal and patient-oriented applications quickly and affordably can smooth this process for providers and patients alike.
The real estate industry, and particularly its residential sector, depends considerably on the ability of real estate professionals to communicate effectively with buyers and sellers, especially the former. Effective communication calls for paying constant attention to prospective buyers, proactive and in response to their questions and concerns.
But, being human beings, realtors cannot be everywhere at once to work with all prospects and cannot always be available to work when it’s the best time for the prospect. The advantage of artificial intelligence is that it is always available and never has to sleep, so applications using AI are responsive to customers at their convenience.
Like with healthcare above, the potential for chat-based AI applications in real estate is considerable.
For example, a chat-enabled, AI-based application for real estate customers can personalize communications with each prospective purchaser, based on analysis of that person’s data. It can also automate follow-up communications and respond to information requests. These activities can keep prospects engaged throughout the sale process, thereby promoting more sales conversions.
Non-chat-based AI applications can also contribute to real estate businesses. The ability of artificial intelligence to process and analyze volumes of consumer data means that they can help real estate marketers with lead generation and customer prospect segmentation, and to gain insights into customer motivations and behaviors.
Based on existing third-party applications, here are some possible uses for no-code applications you can merge with artificial intelligence to enhance your business:
Professional services for our purpose here include fields like accounting or legal services. One way to distinguish them from other users of AI applications is that most professional service organizations tend to use them internally instead of in client-facing environments.
For professional service companies, artificial intelligence in application usage has the following advantages:
Examples of AI-enhanced applications in the professional services sector often involve exacting analysis of large data sets. The purpose of this analysis is what drives the application. For example:
Creating your own AI-enabled applications might sound difficult, but it does not have to be. If you use a no-code application builder like Blaze, you can quickly be making your own purpose-built applications without knowing a single line of programming code.
Our AI-enabled visual creator empowers you to build your app using ChatGPT or any other AI engine with drag-and drop simplicity, then easily link it to external data sources using our pre-built integrations or create your own online database.
If you want help getting started, Blaze also offers many pre-built internal tools for you to build upon, including client portals, workflows, forms, product management and inventory management tools.
If you have questions or need help, our Implementation Team can help you build your application.
Advances in technology should make your life simpler. Just like the automatic transmission in a car makes it easier to drive than with an old stick shift, no-code application programming now makes it easier than ever to build applications without having to rely on the old-style model of hiring programmers or hoping that some third-party application will be “close enough” to what you need.
There is no need to compromise when you use Blaze to build your business AI applications.
The future of your business may well depend on how well you adapt to the proliferation of electronic data and learn how to integrate it into your business decision-making and operations. Being able to build your own AI-based applications with Blaze is one way to make sure you stay up with this trend, starting today.
Questions? You can request a demo of our software builder here, or reach out to us online and one of our no-code software specialists will get back to you as soon as possible.
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