How Can OLPORTAL’s Chatbots Equip Public Health to Better Fight the Spread of Diseases OLPORTAL.ai Follow Apr 16 · 4 min read

Even though we have grown up learning the dictum “prevention is better than cure,” one of the biggest challenges to public health professionals in terms of implementing preventive medicine programs is communication. Health literacy is lacking among huge sections of the population. Moreover, health literacy is based not only on formal education but is dependant largely on medical science research, and dissemination of such scientific knowledge with significant frequency and regularity.

More importantly, however, the information should reach the whole of the population in a relevant manner, and the population needs to be equally receptive to all the information that is provided.

In the case of public health, the failure to reach out to even the smallest sections of the population can prove to be fatal for the entire population. However, such reach is difficult to achieve through normal mediums of mass communication or direct human intervention. This is especially because such messaging is mostly standardized and therefore fails to connect with several individuals.

In such a scenario, individualized messaging can be very useful for public health. While it is impossible for the limited number of public health personnel to cater to such varied needs, it is to be noted that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can enable this.

Present Use of AI in Health Care

AI and especially conversational AI systems have been used by individual health enthusiasts in different forms. AI systems range from those which act as calorie monitors to those which help the users to stay hydrated. There are also comprehensive full-body monitors, which can help indicate any health problem at a very initial stage. They can also track symptoms, and raise flags when something severe happens. They can function almost autonomously and can understand the needs of the users.

However, so far the AI systems are designed to primarily cater to individuals and are meant for providing certain limited services from a specific service provider, which is generally a private medical service provider. However, through a decentralized and unique model public health providers, which are mostly government agencies can make the use of applications focused on collective health-oriented conversational AI-driven systems more attractive to the larger population. This way the larger purposes of public health can be served within the exiting technological and infrastructural frameworks.

Given a huge population has access to mobile devices and internet across all classes in different countries at different stages of development, such an initiative can be effective in tackling infectious diseases along with some of the other common non-communicable and environmental diseases.

A Template for a Decentralized Public Health System through AI

OLPORTAL provides a decentralized market place for AI chatbots, where the developers can incentivize the use of certain applications on the platform through different forms of negative pricing models. Such a model can be capable of incentivizing the users to use this chatbot over the other personal health chatbots. This will increase the access to constant flow of information related to public health for all segments within the larger population with an increased user base.

Moreover, because a degree of pre-training of these chatbots is already done on OLPORTAL, it is possible to equip the bots with a number of basic offline information, which are to be constant over time, like instructions on hygiene, dietary patterns, medical check-ups, and health services available for the public. Such a model can increase the demand for public services among the population.

The customization allows the health authorities to personalize their messaging depending on the data provided by the individuals at the time of registration on the platform. While all the people will be using the same chatbot the messaging will be differentiated from individuals, making it more comprehensible for them.

Moreover, they can be useful for messaging at an international level by the international multi-lateral agencies, since the platform is based on an online blockchain, it can allow seamless transmission of messages.

Payments and monetary transactions, in the form of transfer payments or targeted aids, can also be allowed across borders over such a blockchain platform. This can make it much more comprehensive compared to the other existing AI-based health systems.

Parting Words

All these can make the populations across countries more resilient against all kinds of diseases. And by strengthening the public health system, we can aim to tackle global health challenges in a more proactive manner.

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