Healthcare chatbots are AI-driven conversational agents that interact with patients through text or voice, providing information, symptom assessment, appointment scheduling, or basic health guidance. In the Australian insurance context, chatbots create professional liability exposures when providing health advice, particularly around triage accuracy and appropriate escalation to human practitioners. Insurance must address the scope of the chatbot's functions—purely administrative chatbots carry minimal clinical risk, whilst those offering symptom assessment or health advice require coverage akin to clinical decision support systems. Key considerations include clear disclosure that users are interacting with AI rather than human practitioners, appropriate disclaimers about the limitations of automated advice, compliance with AHPRA advertising standards, and alignment with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) for handling health information collected through chatbot interactions.

Healthcare chatbots are AI-driven conversational agents that interact with patients through text or voice, providing information, symptom assessment, appointment scheduling, or basic health guidance. In the Australian insurance context, chatbots create professional liability exposures when providing health advice, particularly around triage accuracy and appropriate escalation to human practitioners. Insurance must address the scope of the chatbot's functions—purely administrative chatbots carry minimal clinical risk, whilst those offering symptom assessment or health advice require coverage akin to clinical decision support systems. Key considerations include clear disclosure that users are interacting with AI rather than human practitioners, appropriate disclaimers about the limitations of automated advice, compliance with AHPRA advertising standards, and alignment with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) for handling health information collected through chatbot interactions.