On International Self Care Day data shows people are increasingly turning to AI-powered platforms to address health issues themselves
London, 24–07-2024- Number of patients using the healthwords.ai platform has grown by 222% in 2024
- Health issues including, weight loss and chronic back pain saw the sharpest increase
- Nearly 25% of conversations are related to sensitive issues including women’s health, mental health, and sexual health
On International Self Care Day, data from healthwords.ai indicates that more patients are willing to trust AI with a wide range of their health issues than ever before. Recent research conducted by pharmaceutical company STADA Thornton & Ross backs up this trend, showing that more than 1 in 10 of us are already turning to AI for health advice and solutions.
healthwords.ai, which offers accurate advice, effective products, and after-sale support, or directs users to in-person medical care if necessary, has seen conversations on its platform soar recently, with nearly 200,000 patients tested. Users are seeking solutions to issues ranging from muscle and joint pain to oral health and hygiene.
Data also shows that particularly sensitive areas of self-care, such as women’s health, mental health, and sexual health drive nearly 25% of conversations. This indicates that the platform is well suited to cater for issues which people might feel uncomfortable talking about with a person.
Incredibly, research from NHS England has shown that 80% of healthcare is self care related, yet there are nearly 60 million GP consultations a year for minor ailments. Furthermore, NHS waiting lists have risen to 7.6 million, with the Labour Party pledging to “build an NHS fit for the future” now they are in government.
Up to now there hasn’t been an adequate solution, with other digital-led consumer health platforms limited in their ability to converse with patients, and large language models proving unreliable.
healthwords.ai, however, can converse more like a medical professional, with the average number of messages per conversation reaching over 20. This means users are becoming increasingly comfortable engaging with AI, just as it plays an increasingly pivotal role many other areas of our lives. It also means users are entering into a dialogue that probes and presses to reach the best outcome for the patient. Consequently, having used the platform, over 90% of patients said they would do so again.
“People should and are taking a more active role in managing their own health and International Self Care Day is an important reminder of this,” said Arsalan Karim, CEO and co-founder of healthwords.ai. “Reliability is critically important to us and that’s what sets us apart from other platforms. Our state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms are trained on verified medical content and leverages over 1 million medical words to drive accurate solutions.”