WHO Adds AI To Its Health Alert Service

Which will hopefully provide faster, more accurate information about Covid and possibly prevent the next pandemic. JL

The World Health Organization reports:

The WHO Health Alert service on Messenger has been upgraded with (AI) capabilities that provide Messenger users with more accurate information, and allow WHO to respond more quickly. The service is part of WHO’s continuing efforts to ensure that people have access to reliable and trustworthy sources of information on COVID-19 during the global pandemic.Within days of the AI upgrades, over 100 000 persons accessed the service and sent through over 500 000 messages; they also requested data on countries more than 430 000 times. Returning users of the service rose to 80%.

The WHO Health Alert service on Messenger from Facebook has been upgraded with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that provide Messenger users with a better interactive experience, offer more accurate information, and allow WHO to respond more quickly. The service is part of WHO’s continuing efforts to ensure that people have access to reliable and trustworthy sources of information on COVID-19 during the global pandemic.

Changes to the WHO Health Alert service are driven by two advanced AI features:

1. AI-powered conversations: these allow individuals to type questions using natural language to receive official WHO health information, advice, and guidance on COVID-19. Using AI analysis, the service can cluster the most common questions into themes and guide the inclusion of new responses;
2. Localized COVID-19 information: data on the latest official case counts for any country are instantly accessible, curated from official WHO COVID-19 information. It also includes the option to sign up for daily alerts.

The WHO Health Alert service has already seen record high levels of engagement, indicating a positive demand for the service. Within days of the AI upgrades, over 100 000 persons accessed the service and sent through over 500 000 messages; they also requested data on countries more than 430 000 times, and logged 27 000 sign-ups for daily alerts. Returning users of the service rose to 80%. To date, the WHO Health Alert has received almost 4 million messages from over 540 000 users worldwide.

WHO will continue to leverage AI capabilities to respond to users’ needs with new and engaging features.

The messaging experience was developed in collaboration with Sprinklr, as a part of the WHO Technology for COVID-19 Initiative, a pro-bono collaboration of technology companies brought together by WHO to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The WHO Health Alert was developed in partnership with Praekelt.org using Turn machine learning technology.

The WHO Health Alert service on Messenger from Facebook can be accessed at https://m.me/who.