Leveraging Conversational AI for Adolescent Medical Financial Education

Medical financial literacy is essential to make smart decisions in healthcare settings and prevent unanticipated financial hardships. Existing literature has shown that young adults often struggle to understand information associated with health insurance and the financial planning necessary for health-related costs. AI-driven chatbots are emerging as educational tools that have the potential to address this issue. This exploratory study examined an AI chatbot aimed at enhancing medical financial literacy among high school students. Participants engaged with the chatbot’s responses to medical financial questions while also rating the clarity, ease of use, trustworthiness, and educational value of the chatbot engagement. Our experiment results supported that the chatbot increased students’ understanding of the financial aspect of healthcare - 76.9 percent of students reported a high degree of understanding, 80.8 percent rated the chatbot’s responses as clear, and 73.1 percent reported they would recommend it to a peer. The responses indicated that students found the chatbot helpful, but suggested that interactive features be added and/or real-world finance features be incorporated into the chatbot.