Healthcare digital experiences have improved significantly over the past several years. Capabilities such as provider search and online scheduling have helped reduce barriers to access and improve overall usability. Even with these advances, healthcare systems continue to introduce more friction than almost any other consumer-facing industry. As expectations are increasingly shaped by retail, hospitality, and financial services, healthcare risks falling further out of step if it measures digital success only against peer organizations.

Within the Digital Experience practice at Unlock Health, we intentionally look beyond healthcare for inspiration. Best-in-class experiences from adjacent industries often surface new interaction models, evolving consumer behaviors, and practical applications of technology. These insights can be thoughtfully adapted to healthcare’s unique clinical and operational context. This article is part of a broader series that examines external digital trends and explores how they may inform the future of healthcare experience design.

The trend: integrated conversational commerce

Conversational AI is quickly becoming a primary interface for commerce. Over the past two years, leading platforms have moved beyond using AI solely as a question-and-answer tool. Instead, AI is now embedded directly into transactional workflows. Discovery, decision-making, and checkout are increasingly combined into a single conversational interaction.

This shift is changing consumer expectations. Users now expect fewer steps, lower cognitive effort, and clearer guidance throughout complex journeys. These expectations will not remain limited to commerce. They will extend into healthcare and influence how patients expect digital experiences to function.

Traditional e-commerce experiences rely on navigation. Users move through search bars, filters, product pages, carts, and checkout flows. ChatGPT-integrated commerce reverses this approach. It begins with user intent, such as “I need X,” “I’m looking for Y,” or “help me choose.” Conversation is then used to narrow options, explain tradeoffs, and complete transactions without requiring users to manage each step. OpenAI’s introduction of Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol formalizes this approach, signaling a move toward “agentic commerce,” where AI not only informs decisions but helps carry them out.

Recent real-world integrations illustrate how quickly this model is gaining traction. In December 2025, both Instacart and DoorDash announced AI-integrated commerce experiences. DoorDash’s solution allows users to move seamlessly from recipe inspiration to a fully built cart, ready for delivery with minimal effort. Instacart launched an embedded shopping experience within ChatGPT itself, enabling end-to-end grocery planning, cart creation, and Instant Checkout within a single conversational flow. Traditionally fragmented steps such as planning, selecting, validating, and purchasing are unified into one continuous interaction.

The impact: implications for healthcare experience design

Care-seeking journeys share a number of commonalities with commerce journeys. Both involve uncertainty, research, comparison, validation, and eventual conversion, often in the form of scheduling an appointment or initiating care. Despite this overlap, healthcare journeys remain highly fragmented. Patients frequently struggle to understand where to go, what type of care they need, or how to take the next step.

Digital tools attempt to address this complexity, but many experiences still require users to self-navigate dense menus, unfamiliar terminology, and disconnected systems. As consumers become more comfortable with conversational and generative AI, healthcare has an opportunity to rethink its foundational interaction patterns.

Intent-driven digital front doors

Commerce is moving away from category-based navigation toward intent-based conversation. In healthcare, this suggests replacing long lists of appointment types and service lines with guided interactions that begin with what the patient is experiencing or trying to achieve. Conversational interfaces can capture symptoms, goals, urgency, and practical constraints such as location, timing, and insurance coverage, then intelligently route users to the most appropriate next step.

Reduced separation between education and action

Conversational commerce demonstrates the value of closing the gap between learning and doing. In healthcare, education and action are often separated across multiple platforms. Informational content may live on one site, scheduling on another, and follow-up through portals or phone calls. A conversational model enables a more cohesive journey, where education flows naturally into scheduling, visit preparation, and post-visit guidance.

Decision support that reduces cognitive load

Chat-led commerce succeeds by simplifying decisions, clarifying tradeoffs, and focusing attention on what matters most. Healthcare can apply the same approach to high-stress moments, including selecting a site of care, understanding preparation requirements, navigating referrals, or determining next steps in a care plan. Reducing cognitive burden is not only a usability improvement; it directly influences trust, confidence, and adherence.

Trust and identity as core experience elements

When transactions occur within conversational interfaces, trust must be established at the interaction level through transparency, confirmation, security, and reversibility. Healthcare can adopt similar patterns, including clear summaries, explicit confirmations, flexible changes, and strong audit trails that reinforce accountability and reassurance throughout the journey.

Agentic workflows for routine coordination

The Agentic Commerce Protocol points to a future where AI can act on behalf of users within defined guardrails. In healthcare, the opportunity is not automated purchasing, but automated coordination. Conversational agents could support scheduling, intake preparation, medical record requests, referral tracking, appointment reminders, and follow-up actions, reducing administrative burden while improving continuity of care.

Looking ahead

Healthcare does not need to replicate retail or food delivery experiences. It does need to adapt its interaction patterns in response to changing consumer expectations. Intent-first conversations, guided decision-making, and integrated actions shorten the distance between “I need help” and “it’s handled.”

Conversational commerce offers a clear signal of where digital experiences are headed. Healthcare organizations that learn from these models and adapt them thoughtfully will be better positioned to reduce friction, improve access, and deliver more intuitive, relationship-driven experiences for the patients they serve.