Clinicians and patients seeking electronic health applications face challenges in selecting effective solutions due to a high market failure rate. Conversational agent applications (“chatbots”) show promise in increasing healthcare user engagement by creating bonds between the applications and users. It is unclear if chatbots improve patient adherence or if past trends to include chatbots in electronic health applications were due to technology hype dynamics and competitive pressure to innovate. We conducted a systematic literature review using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses methodology on health chatbot randomized control trials. The goal of this review was to identify if user engagement indicators are published in eHealth chatbot studies. A meta-analysis examined patient clinical trial retention of chatbot apps. The results showed no chatbot arm patient retention effect. The small number of studies suggests a need for ongoing eHealth chatbot research, especially given the claims regarding their effectiveness made outside the scientific literatures.

由于市场失败率较高，寻求电子医疗应用的临床医生和患者在选择有效解决方案时面临挑战。会话代理应用程序（“聊天机器人”）通过在应用程序和用户之间建立联系，有望提高医疗保健用户的参与度。目前尚不清楚聊天机器人是否可以提高患者的依从性，或者过去将聊天机器人纳入电子医疗应用的趋势是否是由于技术炒作动态和创新的竞争压力所致。我们使用系统评价的首选报告项目和元分析方法对健康聊天机器人随机对照试验进行了系统的文献综述。本次审查的目的是确定电子医疗聊天机器人研究中是否发布了用户参与度指标。一项荟萃分析检查了患者对聊天机器人应用程序的临床试验保留情况。结果显示聊天机器人手臂没有患者保留效果。少数研究表明需要进行持续的电子医疗聊天机器人研究，特别是考虑到科学文献之外关于其有效性的主张。