How Azure’s ecosystem including OpenAI can revolutionize call centers and telemedicine

Introduction

With the increasing need for remote services, effective communication has become critical for call centers and telemedicine. Companies eagerly search for solutions that can improve their customer service, enhance patient care, and reduce administration time. In this article, we will explore how Azure OpenAI service can help with these challenges.

In call centers, IT support, and telemedicine, numerous phone calls are received daily, and transcribing them can become a time-consuming task. As part of the Azure stack, Cognitive Speech Services can be used to transcribe audio conversations in realtime (of course with a very small delay). Then Azure OpenAI service can safely and privately be applied to summarize each call accurately and efficiently at the desired level of detail. After that there is the need to categorize the conversation. Traditionally, call centers had to label data to detect the topics of conversations. However, our demo shows how Azure OpenAI can perform this task efficiently without any labeled data.

Real-World Applications

Call Centers

Call centers are busy places where hundreds or even thousands of calls are received each day. These calls can be about a variety of topics, such as customer service inquiries or technical support requests. One of the biggest challenges faced by call centers is the need to process these calls efficiently. A lot of time is spent analyzing and summarizing calls, which can be a drain on resources.

The combination of Azure Speech and Azure OpenAI services can help solve this problem. By processing calls in real-time, the services can provide summaries and tag the topics of the conversation. This can help call center agents quickly identify the key issues and respond accordingly, or get suggestions on relevant offers/packages on-the-fly. The AI service can also be used to automatically generate next steps that can help reduce the administration time of any call center. This can free up the agents’ time so they can focus on more important tasks.

Telemedicine

Telemedicine is becoming increasingly popular as people seek convenient and cost-effective ways to receive medical care. Telemedicine involves using technology to diagnose and treat patients remotely. This can include video consultations, remote monitoring, and other forms of virtual care.

Azure can be used to process conversations between doctors and patients in real-time. Apart from call summarisation and topics detection, the Azure OpenAI service can also automate note-taking and generate a list of actions, which can help reduce the administration time of the medical staff.

Furthermore, Azure OpenAI service can be used to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. HIPAA requires that patient data is kept confidential and secure. Azure OpenAI service can be configured to ensure that patient data is transmitted securely and processed in a way that complies with these regulations.

Infrastructure

A proper architecture involves speakers (e.g. patient and doctor) with dual-channel inputs that are processed in real-time using Azure Speech. The input can be provided through any audio buffer like a microphone or phone server, and the dialog is transcribed and processed into text. Then Azure OpenAI analyzes the transcribed text and provides a summary of the conversation and the topics discussed.

The demo showcases how Azure OpenAI service summarizes a conversation between a doctor and a patient while also proposing a list of topics including potential actions and next steps suggested by doctor. This tool can drastically reduce the administration time of any call center, and the doctor needs just to make small edits or approve the generated content. In terms of telemedicine, Azure OpenAI can automate and streamline the care process, resulting in enhanced patient care. The patients can communicate with doctors without worrying about the administration time and can focus on receiving the necessary care.

This approach can be used in other industries too, such as customer service, telesales, and IT help desk. Azure provides the necessary infrastructure to build conversation insights applications required by your company, and as Unit8, we can help develop, deploy, and support such services and customize them according to your company’s needs. Unit8 also offers an accelerator to deploy such services quickly and securely, giving companies a considerable jumptstart.

Conclusion

Azure’s stack including Speech and OpenAI services can provide accurate and efficient summarization of conversations, thus advancing call centers and telemedicine. With the growing demand for remote services, such tools can significantly impact business processes by reducing administration time and focusing on the critical aspects of running a company.

Watch our demo to learn more!