WhatsApp Chatbot for Frontline Health Workers
I am working with the Technology and Design towards “Empowerment” (TanDEm ) lab (Georgia Tech) under the mentorship of Dr. Neha Kumar.
Overview
In 2005, the government of India launched the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and recruited Frontline Health Workers (ASHA workers) to connect vulnerable communities to health care. There are over a million ASHA workers in India. ASHAs serve as a link between the community and the public health system. The pandemic has drastically increased the workload of such frontline caregivers as they have been recruited to help with door-to-door surveys and identifying those with symptoms in addition to their regular tasks of data collection, mother and child care provision, and information dissemination. We propose a design of the WhatsApp chatbot that aims to save the undue effort and time taken by these caregivers on performing tasks that can be automated with the help of technology.
Chatbots are gaining traction in health settings globally for automating screening, information delivery, intake surveys, and more. These aim to improve caregiving, but also risk burdening overtaxed and fragile healthcare infrastructures. We consider the role that chatbots might play in enabling broader ecologies of care. Engaging in the design of a WhatsApp bot (Sehat Sakhi or health companion) for frontline workers providing maternal and child care in India, we iterated through three rounds of interviews and think-aloud sessions. The chatbot aimed to support burdensome everyday tasks like data collection, work planning, and scheduling visits. Our paper offers insight into what work to automate, workers’ perception of and trust in chatbots, language used in interactions, and consideration for varied digital use and cultural and familial contexts. We extend Human—Computer Interaction research by moving beyond individual care interactions to consider how chatbots might be integrated to support and strengthen care ecologies overall.
The probable advantages of the proposed design are mentioned below.
The remote data collection feature of the designed system would present the ASHA workers with a safer option needed in the current pandemic situation. Additionally, the desired household can automatically take the surveys, thus saving time and effort for the ASHA workers.
The ASHA workers serving at the grassroots of the healthcare hierarchy frequently need to communicate and share data with the higher authorities. Thus, employing such a system with a cloud repository makes it possible for the designated officers to monitor the workflows of every ASHA worker in real-time. This keeps them updated on all the hard work done by the ASHA workers with timestamps, leading to better incentive opportunities.
Another benefit for ASHAs is that they can remotely monitor the data collected from the households anytime and anywhere. Such a data collection system would also centralize all the collected data and store it all in one place, thus, making it easier to share with higher authorities. Such applications are impossible in the current manual storing of data on registers.
The automated reminder system would make it convenient for ASHA workers to make more time for community care work and leave the remembering of essential tasks to technology.
Additionally, such chatbots could serve as a platform to imitate the everyday general conversations between ASHA and the community members, thus making them feel more connected to their caregiver while leaving some room for ASHA workers to make time for themselves and their families.
