Chatbots in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

Adam S Miner; Liliana Laranjo; A Baki Kocaballi

doi:10.1038/s41746-020-0280-0

Chatbots in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

NPJ Digit Med. 2020 May 4:3:65. doi: 10.1038/s41746-020-0280-0. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Adam S Miner^{1

2}, Liliana Laranjo³, A Baki Kocaballi^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ 1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA USA.
² 2Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA USA.
³ 3Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW Australia.
⁴ 4Faculty of Engineering & IT, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW Australia.

Abstract

We are all together in a fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Chatbots, if effectively designed and deployed, could help us by sharing up-to-date information quickly, encouraging desired health impacting behaviors, and lessening the psychological damage caused by fear and isolation. Despite this potential, the risk of amplifying misinformation and the lack of prior effectiveness research is cause for concern. Immediate collaborations between healthcare workers, companies, academics and governments are merited and may aid future pandemic preparedness efforts.

Keywords: Epidemiology; Population screening.

Abstract

Grants and funding