Top Risks & Opportunities of Using AI for Healthcare Sites

A McKinsey report found that 59 percent of healthcare organizations already partner with third-party vendors to develop customized AI solutions, and 24 percent plan to build in-house solutions. Plus, around 60 percent of those who have implemented generative AI solutions are either already seeing a positive ROI or expect to.

However, incorporating AI into your web design and marketing strategy has both opportunities and risks that you must manage carefully to maintain audience trust. This guide explores top risks and opportunities for healthcare content marketers looking to incorporate AI sustainably into their healthcare or hospital web design strategies.

Risks of Using AI for Healthcare Web Development

1. HIPAA violations and other data privacy concerns

Maintaining HIPAA compliance is crucial to avoid violating federal law and keep patients’ protected health information (PHI) secure.

If your organization uses AI solutions to support marketing, you must balance protecting PHI and generating the most valuable AI outputs for your online marketing strategy. This is challenging because AI tools rely on accurate, robust information to make suggestions and recommendations, which can be difficult to provide when you have a mandate to keep patient information private. According to a recent HIPAA Journal article:

“An important limitation on the use of PHI under the HIPAA Privacy Rule is that a Covered Entity and its Business Associates must only use the minimum amount of PHI necessary for its intended purposes.”

Kanopi’s healthcare web development guide recommends using “website analytics platforms built with HIPAA compliance in mind,” including Freshpaint and Piwik, to keep patient information secure. These solutions prevent sensitive data from being shared with non-HIPAA-compliant tools.

In addition to choosing AI-compliant tech solutions, your healthcare organization should create a robust data governance policy before using AI. Work with your legal team to create policies for keeping PHI secure when using these technologies and addressing security breaches. Assign roles and a chain of command, such as who will notify impacted parties, who will investigate the breach, and who will establish the next steps to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future.

2. Accuracy issues

Studies have found that no AI systems can guarantee 100% accuracy. Accuracy issues impact both generative and predictive AI solutions and can harm your marketing efforts in the following ways:

• Generative AI: If your organization uses inaccurate information supplied by AI tools in its online content, such as blog posts, it risks damaging its reputation and spreading medical misinformation.
• Predictive AI: You may also use AI to help generate predictions for your healthcare marketing efforts, such as recommendations for marketing campaigns that will work best for your audience or certain donors to target with your outreach. Accuracy issues mean these predictions may not be 100% reliable, leading you to waste time or resources. In addition, you must ensure the data you use to train predictive AI solutions represents the diversity of your healthcare organization’s audience to prevent biases.

Carefully scrutinize any outputs you receive from generative or predictive AI solutions before using the information in your online content or marketing campaigns. Are the facts verified by a variety of reliable sources? Do recommendations and predictions align with what you know to be true about your audience? Are predictions free of any biases or prejudices?

Balancing the convenience of AI with thorough human oversight is crucial to reducing data accuracy risks.

3. AI explainability

Your organization’s explanation to your audience of why and how you use AI will make or break your ability to use these solutions effectively in the long term. You must be as transparent as possible with your audience about how you use AI solutions, or you risk losing their trust.

Promote transparency by:

• Offering a publicly-available AI use policy that audience members can read on your website. Explain the benefits of AI solutions to your organization and the tools you use to create a better patient experience.
• Allowing audience members to opt out of data collection. Provide a simple way for website visitors to opt out of data collection by completing a form on your website. Remove their information from your database to respect their privacy.

If you can’t balance the risks listed above with the benefits listed below, your organization is better off not using AI solutions until you can devise a solution for leveraging these tools securely and enhancing their accuracy.

Opportunities of Using AI for Healthcare Web Development

1. Streamlined content generation

Many healthcare organizations turn to AI solutions because they offer convenience, allowing marketers to plan online content campaigns more strategically and efficiently. Here are a few ways you can use AI content tools to enhance the content creation process:

• Use data analytics to determine the most popular content types. Assess your most recent online content, including the topics covered and the level of engagement each received, to predict what kinds of content your audience will respond best to in the future.
• Use generative AI to conduct content brainstorming and outlining. Generative AI solutions can help create blog post topic ideas, titles, meta descriptions, outlines, and creative ideas for presenting content more engagingly. For example, you could tell your solution: “Come up with a unique idea for an engaging infographic I can use to explain how RSV spreads in a community.”

These solutions help increase your content strategy’s return on investment (ROI) by allowing you to focus on the content types and styles that drive the highest audience engagement.

2. Chatbots to improve the patient experience

Chatbots are AI messaging tools that patients and other online visitors can use to obtain information about your healthcare organization or hospital.

Often, users visit healthcare websites in an anxious state, hoping to get answers, resources, or support for a medical condition. A chatbot improves the user experience by connecting these individuals with crucial, accurate information as quickly as possible.

Using these AI solutions, website visitors can:

• Schedule appointments.
• See lists of available healthcare providers.
• Access FAQs about health conditions.
• Find recent blog posts about topics they’re interested in.

You should also make it as easy as possible for visitors to speak with a real person if the chatbot cannot answer their questions. The chatbot can lead users in the right direction by providing accurate contact information and hours of availability or connecting them to a live person via chat.

3. Expanded fundraising capabilities

If your organization is a nonprofit that accepts donations, AI solutions can support your online fundraising efforts in various ways. Primarily, this support takes the form of prospect research and online donation page optimization:

Prospect research

BWF’s guide to AI fundraising use cases states, “With the help of AI solutions, healthcare organizations can identify their top prospective donors quickly and reach out to them with personalized messages.”

You can use predictive analytics to identify website visitors with a robust history of engaging with your nonprofit online and a high giving capacity. You can then use other marketing platforms, including email and direct mail, to target these prospective donors with messages that align with their interests and reference their involvement history with your organization.

Online donation page optimization

AI content generation tools can help your nonprofit determine the best ways to design your online donation form. With these solutions, your fundraising team can:

• Determine the right suggested donation amounts to offer donors based on the most popular online gift amounts.
• Optimize the written copy on your donation form using AI writing tools to help make your message more compelling.
• Conduct A/B testing for different versions of your online giving page to assess which options drive the most gifts.

According to the latest M+R Benchmarks study, desktop conversion rates for main nonprofit donation pages were 16% and just 10% for mobile pages. With these AI-driven strategies, you can increase the chances that donors will stay on your giving form and actually complete a gift.

It’s ultimately up to your organization to determine whether the risks of using AI for your healthcare site to access these rewards are worth it. Risk management will be crucial if you decide to move forward with AI solutions for your online marketing strategy. Prioritizing security, explainability, and transparency will allow you to retain audience trust and effectively serve your community.