The promise of artificial intelligence to increase enterprise efficiency – and profitability - has tantalized business owners and managers since the first AI programs appeared in the 1950s. But despite steady advances over the decades, AI technology has been slow to win broad-based acceptance in business and professional use.

Part of this reluctance has been because until recently AI technology was not mature enough to rely on for mission-critical applications. And part has been because it is hard for non-programmers to combine AI functionalities like machine learning and artificial neural networks with a practical front-end application.

Advances in machine learning technology over the years have made AI-enabled applications for business more practical and commonplace today. In healthcare, for example, many software companies offer to healthcare providers applications supporting AI-enhanced and AI-driven services for clinical and operational uses:

• Physicians rely on AI-enhanced image analysis to support more accurate diagnoses, and to analyze patient electronic health records, physicians’ notes, and treatment histories to create personalized treatment plans.
• Administrators use AI to support operational business decision-making and forecasting, such as by using community population data to detect underserved areas and to identify which populations need which service lines the most.

Part of the appeal of using artificial intelligence tools in your business is that you can create customized applications on top of them. You do this by creating a user interface that overlays and integrates with the underlying AI engine.

Until recently, though, the promise of building your own business AI applications has been the problem that has acted as a speed brake on the adoption of AI all along: building that user interface requires professional coding support. And that is where the potential cost benefits begin to disappear.

This article is not about ChatGPT, but you have probably heard about it. Briefly put, it is an AI overlay tool that uses natural language processing technology to let you communicate with the AI in a simple, conversational way. You can ask it questions, and it will reply to you in plain and perfect English. You can even have ChatGPT do some of your communicating to others for you – drafting a memo or an email, for instance.

One of its more recent improvements is that it can now code software programs for you.

ChatGPT is one example of a useful AI tool, but its front end still suffers from the problem we laid out above: programming its front end to interface seamlessly with its AI engine requires considerable programming expertise.

But what if you can do something similar – build your own software front end to harness the benefits of using Big Data – by yourself? You can. In this article we’ll show you some examples of how businesses are already relying on AI-based applications for internal purposes, and how you can do the same quickly and affordably by using a no-code program builder like Blaze. We will use healthcare, real estate, and professional services providers as examples.

AI for Healthcare

Healthcare is a field in which successful patient outcomes depend on effective communication across multiple domains: for example, patient-to-physician, physician-to-specialist, medical professionals with administration, and providers with insurers. This makes healthcare one of the biggest opportunity areas for developing user-friendly business AI tools.

Can AI Applications Improve Healthcare Quality?

Chat-based AI engines can not only emulate human communication, but also to effectively “think” on their own. This has led many in the healthcare industry to consider ways to use it to improve the quality of patient experiences through artificial intelligence. Some of the emerging ideas include:

• Using AI apps to improve patient communications and engagement. How soon a patient can reach someone with whom that person can converse with can make a difference in how effective that communication is. Patients who must wait on hold for long periods, especially after first dealing with limited capability telephone screening robots, may even give up before they speak with a human being. AI-enabled applications can interactively engage patients immediately using language they feel comfortable with, making for a more welcoming communication experience.
• Using AI-based software to improve patient healthcare knowledge. The Internet offers a tremendous amount of health information for patients, but they are largely on their own when it comes to discovering the information most relevant to them and then being able to use it. Artificial intelligence can not only swiftly sift through massive volumes of healthcare data, it can also analyze it all and present its findings to the patient in terms the patient can readily understand.
• Using AI applications as a “force multiplier” for healthcare provider staff. Smart applications can take over many routine tasks that staff presently perform, like appointment reminders and other pre- and post-appointment communications, patient billings, and coordination with other healthcare providers and insurers. This makes staff more productive and reduces the need to hire additional staff.

Patient Interaction Applications

Making it easier for patients to communicate with their healthcare providers is an evergreen area for new application development, especially given the improvements in natural language processing. Sometimes referred to as “chatbot therapy,” applications that use chatbot-style interfaces can help patients find healthcare providers, describe their symptoms or medical needs, and schedule appointments.

For existing patients, AI-based apps can serve as virtual nurses, helping them stay on top of their medical appointments and to monitor their conditions at home. Other chat-based health applications include software to enable patient-assistive robots to interact with elderly patients, up to and including robots that use AI to monitor their physical and emotional well-being. Robotic AI applications exist today to help patients who are experiencing loneliness, isolation, dementia, or depression by providing cognitive and even emotional stimulation through interaction with the robot.

Chatbots have been gaining in popularity for several years, and they're finally at the point where some claim that they can now pass the “Turing Test” – that is, the best chatbots are now largely undistinguishable from communicating with real people.

How much benefit patients and providers can realize with artificial intelligence technology depends in part on how much patients are willing to put their trust into artificially intelligent chatbots. The good news here is that, if the underlying medical issue or question is not too serious, patients seem to trust AI even when they know they are dealing with a chatbot instead of a person.

The results of a recent study suggest that intelligent chatbots are becoming good enough at communication that when patients do not know whether they are dealing with a chatbot or a human being they guess incorrectly one-third of the time. This is true going both ways: patients were as likely to confuse a human for a chatbot as vice versa. The study also found that patient comfort with relying on intelligent chatbots is growing, although slowly: they are more likely to trust AI to handle administrative matters like appointment scheduling and answering low-risk questions about their health than to dispense medical advice.

Artificial intelligence technologies and applications will ultimately become an integral part of patient care in much the same way that patients and physicians have had to adapt to the Internet as a healthcare communication portal. In the same way that providers must eventually learn to use new technologies like online medical referral networking and remote monitoring technologies, they will need to learn how best to build AI into their diagnoses, treatment plans, and patient communications.

Early adopters of this new technology will be at a long-term advantage compared to providers who hold back and stick with older ways of talking with and educating their patients. Having a no-code programming option available to you puts you in a good position to be one of these early adopters.

Patient Diagnosis and Treatment Planning

Today’s widespread reliance on patient electronic health records and other forms of digital data can be a mixed blessing for physicians. It is true that the volumes of patient data available now make it possible to gain more information on their health conditions than ever before. It is also true, however, that the sheer volume of electronic information available for analysis can become “too much of a good thing”: analyzing it all can be difficult or impossible even for teams of people to effectively sort through.

Artificial intelligence tools can help to analyze this data quickly while simultaneously gleaning insights from it that human eyes might miss, or that human brains might not recognize. The challenge is to harness the power of AI-assisted patient diagnosis and treatment planning with an application that physicians find inviting to use.

No-Code AI Healthcare Application Ideas

Third-party AI-enabled applications for healthcare providers have been available for a while now. Healthcare facility executives use artificial intelligence applications to help with decision making, like doing service line analytics using demographic, economic, regional, and other data to predict what kinds of healthcare services local populations will require. They also help administrators to analyze and scorecard the performance of departments and even individual physicians.

Third-party AI healthcare apps help physicians in diagnosing diseases and conditions and in treatment planning. They are also helpful in medical research.

These third-party applications still have one drawback that, while it may have been unavoidable a few years ago, is unnecessary today: they require the user to adapt to the software interface with the AI, instead of letting the user create the interface. With no-code application creation tools now available that can readily interface with any AI engine, there is no need any longer to rely on software programmers outside your organization to guess what is best for you.

What can you do with AI-based, no-code healthcare applications? There are two short answers to this question. First, you can do anything with your own no-code healthcare applications that a third-party programmer can do for you. And second, you can do it faster and less expensively.

The place to start is to see what uses already exist for AI-enhanced applications. These are immediate candidates to consider for your own purposes. These include:

• Analyzing patient electronic health record (EHR) data to help healthcare professionals to make more accurate diagnoses faster. What is more, AI software can analyze the patient’s EHRs in the broader context of many other relevant patient EHRs and treatment plans available to its dataset.
• Helping physicians to analyze not only physicians’ notes and EHRs, but also relevant additional healthcare, demographic, research, and behavioral data to anticipate a patient’s possible future risk factors that might require a readmission. This kind of information supports highly individualized patient treatment plans.
• Telemedicine applications, such as wearable remote patient monitoring devices and their software but which lately include applications made for smart phones, often rely on artificial intelligence to analyze the incoming electronic data before a treating physician sees it. The AI can also process the patient’s data in comparison to data from other patients with similar conditions to look for possible issues of concern for the patient. If the AI detects information patterns from the data that indicate a developing problem, the software can alert the physician to it in a timely way.
• Artificial intelligence applications promote interactive patient treatment. This applies throughout the patient’s healthcare experience, from initial communication with the provider through in-patient care and eventually back to home care. Of special note here is what is becoming known as, “chatbot therapy.” Remote patient monitoring may gather and analyze patient vital sign data, but AI using neuro-linguistic programming can communicate with the patient in plain English, spoken or typed. A few examples of chatbot uses in patient care include appointment scheduling and reminders, answering patient questions about their symptoms, and encouraging and monitoring patients in taking their prescribed medication.

Healthcare applications are excellent for no-code programming because, especially when coupled with a chat-based AI, they make it easier for health professionals and patients alike to feel more at ease when prescribing and interacting with treatments and treatment plans that are becoming increasingly technological themselves. Simplifying the ability to create internal and patient-oriented applications quickly and affordably can smooth this process for providers and patients alike.

AI for Real Estate

The real estate industry, and particularly its residential sector, depends considerably on the ability of real estate professionals to communicate effectively with buyers and sellers, especially the former. Effective communication calls for paying constant attention to prospective buyers, proactive and in response to their questions and concerns.

But, being human beings, realtors cannot be everywhere at once to work with all prospects and cannot always be available to work when it’s the best time for the prospect. The advantage of artificial intelligence is that it is always available and never has to sleep, so applications using AI are responsive to customers at their convenience.

Like with healthcare above, the potential for chat-based AI applications in real estate is considerable.

For example, a chat-enabled, AI-based application for real estate customers can personalize communications with each prospective purchaser, based on analysis of that person’s data. It can also automate follow-up communications and respond to information requests. These activities can keep prospects engaged throughout the sale process, thereby promoting more sales conversions.

Non-chat-based AI applications can also contribute to real estate businesses. The ability of artificial intelligence to process and analyze volumes of consumer data means that they can help real estate marketers with lead generation and customer prospect segmentation, and to gain insights into customer motivations and behaviors.

No-Code AI Application Ideas for Real Estate

Based on existing third-party applications, here are some possible uses for no-code applications you can merge with artificial intelligence to enhance your business:

• Creating floor plans and property layouts, making three-dimensional models of properties, and creating virtual property tours.
• Analyzing real estate values to make investment recommendations, and to find opportunities for lenders in commercial real estate.
• Virtual homebuying assistants for real estate purchasers.
• Analyzing customer data by considering others like them to predict their behaviors. Some companies use AI-driven applications to identify buyers who may have trouble qualifying for credit or who may be at a higher risk for defaulting on a mortgage.
• AI-enabled apps are useful beyond real estate buying and selling. Property managers, for example, can create no-code applications that use artificial intelligence to predict maintenance requirements, and to assess neighborhood factors like property values and crime rates.

AI for Professional Services

Professional services for our purpose here include fields like accounting or legal services. One way to distinguish them from other users of AI applications is that most professional service organizations tend to use them internally instead of in client-facing environments.

For professional service companies, artificial intelligence in application usage has the following advantages:

• It can process and analyze enormous amounts of information quickly. Especially for financial and accounting firms that swim in an ever-deepening ocean of data, creating custom applications that use AI engines is not only appealing, but may soon become necessary to stay current with emerging industry trends.
• It can be more accurate than humans in spotting inconsistencies or discrepancies in data. “The devil is in the details” is a well-known saying among lawyers; when analyzing large amounts of numerical, financial, or statistical data. The concept here is like how physicians use AI to help with image analysis: many times, the artificial intelligence can spot things that the human eye misses.
• It is better suited than humans to performing repetitive activities. Humans are physical beings, with all the limitations that come with that status. They need to rest. They are prone to distractions. They can become bored easily, especially when doing rote tasks over long periods, and that can lead to inadvertent errors. Artificial intelligence is immune to all these biological shortcomings. It needs no rest, it never gets bored or distracted, and by automating tasks and processes it can get them done faster and with better accuracy.

No-Code AI Applications for Professional Services

Examples of AI-enhanced applications in the professional services sector often involve exacting analysis of large data sets. The purpose of this analysis is what drives the application. For example:

• AI applications to review financial data make for more reliable regular audits and analyses of business transactions, like line-by-line invoice reviews, than is possible through manual methods. Artificial intelligence can also help to reveal customer trends based on past performance data to make predictions about their future performance, such as their likelihood of paying invoices on time.
• Natural language processing can help to examine documents for possible risk and compliance problems.
• AI can automate repetitive tasks like budget projections and is particularly well suited to analyzing budget data from past years or past projects. What is more, an AI-enabled budgeting application can also analyze your organization’s budget against your peers in your market, a helpful benchmarking capability that cannot be matched by manual means.
• You can create AI-supported applications to support your organization’s marketing efforts, performing tasks like scoring leads and automatically scheduling follow-ups with qualified leads.

Build Your Own No-Code AI Software Applications Today

Creating your own AI-enabled applications might sound difficult, but it does not have to be. If you use a no-code application builder like Blaze, you can quickly be making your own purpose-built applications without knowing a single line of programming code.

Our AI-enabled visual creator empowers you to build your app using ChatGPT or any other AI engine with drag-and drop simplicity, then easily link it to external data sources using our pre-built integrations or create your own online database.

If you want help getting started, Blaze also offers many pre-built internal tools for you to build upon, including client portals, workflows, forms, product management and inventory management tools.

If you have questions or need help, our Implementation Team can help you build your application.

Advances in technology should make your life simpler. Just like the automatic transmission in a car makes it easier to drive than with an old stick shift, no-code application programming now makes it easier than ever to build applications without having to rely on the old-style model of hiring programmers or hoping that some third-party application will be “close enough” to what you need.

There is no need to compromise when you use Blaze to build your business AI applications.

The future of your business may well depend on how well you adapt to the proliferation of electronic data and learn how to integrate it into your business decision-making and operations. Being able to build your own AI-based applications with Blaze is one way to make sure you stay up with this trend, starting today.

Questions? You can request a demo of our software builder here, or reach out to us online and one of our no-code software specialists will get back to you as soon as possible.