An In-Depth Review of Healthcare Chatbot Technologies and Their Impact on Patient Care

The rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) have led to the widespread adoption of chatbots across var-ious sectors, including healthcare.This survey provides a comparative analysis of contemporary healthcare chatbots by examining their architecture, underlying technologies, and applications in domains such as patient engagement, symp-tom assessment, mental health support, and medical information dissemination.We systematically evaluated existing chatbot platforms based on key parame-ters such as conversational accuracy, usability, integration capabilities, security and patient satisfaction.Additionally, we discuss the challenges associated with deploying chatbots in healthcare settings, including data privacy, ethical con-cerns, and regulatory compliance.Through this review, we identified gaps in current implementation and highlighted opportunities for future research aimed at enhancing the effectiveness, accessibility, and trustworthiness of healthcare chatbots.This paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners with a com-prehensive understanding of the current state of healthcare chatbots and insights into the development of next-generation digital health solutions.