Case #

You need to implement an AI-based chat bot solution based on the Azure AI Bot Service or Azure AI Health Bot Service and you need to perform an initial cost assessment of the solution. This article provides guidance on how to estimate Azure Bot Service costs.

Solution #

Introduction #

In Azure there are three different services for creating AI bots:

• Azure AI bot service
• Azure AI Health bot service
• Power virtual agents (subsystem of Microsoft Power Platform)

Choosing the right service for each scenario should consider the following guidelines: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/bot-overview?view=azure-bot-service-4.0.

In order to be able to prepare a relevant financial estimation for your implementation, you must answer the following relevant question: Will you be using Azure AI bot service or Azure AI health bot service?

Azure AI bot service pricing overview #

The following applies to Azure AI bot service charges.

• There is a charge for the Azure AI bot service itself if you use premium channels and not just standard channels (free).
• Currently (prices always fluctuate) Microsoft's pricing for Azure West Europe region for AI bot premium channels is €0.469 per 1,000 bot messages per month (S1 pricing plan).
• However, there is also the Free pricing plan, if you are going to use a maximum of 10,000 messages per month (free pricing plan).
  • Standard channels include Microsoft first-party services (e.g., Skype, Cortana, Microsoft Teams) and services with publicly available Bot APIs (e.g., Facebook, Slack).
  • Premium channels enable communication within your own application or website.
• If the AI ​​solution you want to provide will also include other Azure cognitive services, corresponding charges must be taken into account: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/.

Azure AI Health Bot service pricing overview #

The following applies to Azure AI health bot service charges.

• There are several pricing plans available and the selection of the appropriate plan should be made by following the instructions in the following article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/health-bot/pricing-details.
• Current prices (prices vary based on Microsoft pricing policy) can be found here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bot-services/health-bot/.
• The Azure AI health bot service is created by the Azure portal and you manage it from a special portal created for the specific AI health bot instance, as described here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/health-bot/quickstart-createyourhealthcarebot. From this special Web portal, the connections (integration channels) of the Azure AI health bot service with other services (Web apps, facebook, teams, medical information systems, etc) are managed.

The following pre-implementation assessment questions must be answered, in order to calculate capacity metrics and associated costs for the implementation:

• Azure AI health bot service free plan includes the following. Do these cover you or will you need the Standard plan? See below.
  • a. Free tier includes up to 3,000 messages and 200 MCU's.
  • b. It is not allowed to exceed these limits (overage). If they are exceeded, the service is disabled and cannot serve requests.
• Azure AI health bot service standard plan includes the following.
  • a. Standard tier includes 10,000 messages and 1,000 MCU's.
  • b. Overage is allowed with the following additional charges: i. €2.34 per 1000 overage messages and ii. €0.17 per overage MCU
• If the AI ​​solution you want to provide will also include other Azure AI cognitive services, the corresponding charges must be taken into account: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services /. See this link and tell us if there will be additional Azure AI cognitive services in the solution you are planning.

An MCU is a Medical Content Consumption Unit. Essentially, it's another cost incurred for the use of certain third-party medical content that is licensed by Microsoft and made available through the AI health bot service. Typically MCUs represent encounters with third-party content (such as the Capita or Infermedica symptom checker). For example, a triage session with the Infermedica symptom checker is considered an encounter and counted as one MCU. MCUs are charged in addition to the ai health bot message cost, and are fixed per encounter (so a longer triage encounter with more messages wouldn't increase the MCU cost). The encounter is counted when it starts, even if the end-user doesn't complete the scenario.

Last, but not least, you should consider the software development effort, which will be needed to integrated the Azure Bot services inside your existing or new software application.

Azure AI Bot and Health AI bot service references #

• https://ipspecialist.net/azure-ai-bot-service/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bot-services/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bot-services/health-bot/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/health-bot/overview
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/
• https://accessibleai.dev/post/create_and_deploy_bot/
• https://accessibleai.dev/post/azure_bot_service_pricing/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/azure-health-bot/
• https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-gb/marketplace/apps/Microsoft.HealthBot?tab=Overview
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/health-bot/partners/
• https://www.innofactor.com/
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/health-bot/