Overview
AUTOMAISE addressed EOSC Secretariat challenge “COVID-19 Fast Track Funding” by using its advanced automation technology to setup a tailor made like solution for the challenge raised by COVID-19.
AUTOMAISE built an advanced AI conversational digital assistant in 5 languages (EN, ES, PT, FR and DE) in 4 months (June-September 2020] to help alleviate the pressure of not having enough COVID-19 tests and to help keep people well informed about the pandemic.
Despite its complexity and all the challenges raised by the pandemic, AUTOMAISE managed to deliver the COVID-19 Digital Assistant solution as planned, on time and within budget.
At the moment, the solution delivered is fully managed by AUTOMAISE and is free to the Portuguese public, as well for any entities who want to include it their portals/sites. The goal is to spread the usage of this application across many channels, e.g. WhatsApp, FB Messenger, WebChat widgets on sites, Twitter, Voice/Phone gateways, e-mail, etc. All of this available at no charge at all to the public.
Watch our past Co-creating EOSC Webinars: Fighting COVID-19 with Open Science
Objectives & Challenges
Using its advanced AI automation technology AUTOMAISE decided to setup a tailor made solution for the challenge raised by COVID-19. AUTOMAISE proposed building a EU official advanced AI conversational digital assistant help alleviate the pressure of not having enough COVID-19 tests and to help keep people well informed about the pandemic.
The idea was to use natural language understanding and AI to power the following features:
- COVID-19 pre-check (this feature consisted of an AI driven flow of questions);
- Answer frequently asked questions using natural language and AI;
- Provide recommendations using natural language and AI;
- Self-service management portal.
For the COVID-19 pre-check feature, the goal was to implement WHO and EU health institute recommendations on triaging the COVID-19 disease. Local characteristics/stages were also considered when calculating the diagnostic. This algorithm was validated by both Minho and Porto Universities’ Health Schools. Being able to achieve this accurate algorithm was the main challenge!
Another goal was to have this digital assistant available in 5 languages (EN, ES, PT, FR and DE), so that the solution could be available to the European public as well as to entities who would want to include it their portals or websites.
Main Findings
After developing the COVID-19 Digital Assistant, AUTOMAISE came to the conclusion that if the solution is deployed, it will bring the following benefits:
- Reducing the pressure on health support phone lines, as people can run prechecks on themselves using an official tool;
- Mitigating the lack of COVID-19 tests available, allowing the available tests to be used for serious suspects first;
- Alleviating people's day-to-day stress and anxiety as the feature will be available at their fingertips;
- Creating AI models that will gain knowledge and accuracy as time goes on. It will become an asset not only to anticipate the evolution of the COVID-19 outbreak but also for potential future epidemics;
- Keeping people informed, mitigating misinformation and fake news;
- Indirectly reducing costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
Main Recommendations
AUTOMAISE believes that deploying an EU official solution within the European Union will increase both awareness and credibility. Great benefits would come from delivering an official COVID assistant with and EU “stamp” on it for the general public, as public health response services are “overwhelmed” because of the growing impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. Every tool that can give first responders a chance to breathe and reorganize should be implemented!
AUTOMAISE recommends that EOSC assist in:
- Helping AUTOMAISE to get enough budget to host and run this solution for 1 year;
- Spreading the word so that this digital assistant will be installed as a web chat widget on existing organizations/entities’ websites across the European Union (initially for the supported languages);
- Adding financial support in order to include more Official EU languages.
