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- The Wits Health Consortium hopes an HIV chatbot will assist South Africans to open up about their sexual history.
- SA companies received a grant to develop global health solutions for their communities, using AI.
- The companies created chat engines which link healthcare users and healthcare workers.
The Wits Health Consortium is working on large language models (LLMs) - a chat engine that will interact with people in a human-like way to help control the HIV epidemic in South Africa.
Caroline Govathson, a Wits University researcher who attended the 2023 Grand Challenge Event in Dakar this week, said 'Your Choice' was a chat engine that stood for 'Your Own Unique Risk Calculation for HIV-related Outcomes and Infections.'
It would be used to improve the accuracy of risk assessments and increase awareness of preventative treatments.
She said the target was to get people talking about their HIV challenges and sexual history.
HIV patients participating in the Ritshidze State of Healthcare report often complained about stigmatisation and privacy violation in public healthcare facilities.
However, they might find it easier to talk to a chatbot, a communication-simulating computer programme designed to mimic human-to-human conversation.
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"We have been struggling to get people on HIV prevention. The uptake is too low. Screening for HIV risk factors is complicated, as several people fear being judged and stigmatised. We have created this conventional tool that will make people feel free to talk about their problems," she said.
She said when the patient had shared their problems, it sent a message to the healthcare providers.
"This chat engine is down on time, and it allows for certain conversations that would have never taken place if it was a face-to-face conversation," she said.
Govathson said the chatbot currently had 60 users because it was still in its testing stage, and it was a proof-of-concept conversational tool for health.
"We have been getting feedback from people on what to change and add to it. We are in the process of adding a voice to text so that those who cannot type can be able to speak," she said.
The consortium and four other South African companies are among 50 recipients of grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The recipients must develop global health and development solutions for their communities using AI-enabled LLMs.
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The foundation received over 1 300 applications within two weeks of posting its proposal request.
The foundation said the 50 selected projects were from African countries and aligned with its goal of fostering a global innovation ecosystem in places where it would have the most impact.
According to the foundation, each recipient would receive up to US$100 000, about R1.8 million, to advance its research project, for a total of US$5 million (R96 million) in grants.
Another grant recipient who attended the event was Scott Mahoney of The Health Foundation of South Africa.
His company created an application that uses ChatGPT-4 to analyse text-based medical evidence in various formats, to extract relevant clinical recommendations, and to formulate clinician-validated clinical decisions for frontline healthcare workers in near-real time.
Mahoney added:
He said most content would be stored on the device, and they hoped to mitigate bandwidth issues.
He added that ChatGPT-4 would improve decision-making speed, accuracy, and inclusivity.
"They will validate the application by comparing its performance with recommendations provided by their clinical editorial team," Mahoney said.
