Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Sep 27, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 26, 2022 - Nov 21, 2022
Date Accepted: Mar 16, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Apr 19, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Building a chatbot in a pandemic
ABSTRACT
Easy access to evidence-based information on COVID-19 within an infodemic has been a challenging task. Chatbots have been introduced in times of emergency, when human resources are stretched thin, and individuals need a user-centred resource. The WHO Regional Office for Europe and UNICEF Europe and Central Asia (UNICEF ECARO) offices came together to build a chatbot, HealthBuddy+, to assist countries in the Region to access accurate COVID-19 information in the local languages, adapted for the country context. Working in close collaboration with thematic technical experts, colleagues and counterparts at the country level allowed for the project to be tailored to a diverse range of subtopics. To ensure that HealthBuddy+ was relevant and useful in countries across the Region, the two regional offices worked closely with their counterparts in country offices, who proved essential in partnering with national authorities, engaging communities, and promoting the tool, and identifying the most relevant communication channels in which to embed HealthBuddy+. Over the past two years, the project has expanded from a web-based chatbot in seven languages to a multistream, multifunction chatbot available in 16 regional languages. Two years on, HealthBuddy+ continues to expand and adjust to meet emerging health emergency needs.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.