Peta Rolls came to expect Aida’s call at 10am each morning.
A daily check-in call from an AI voice bot was not part of the service Rolls expected when she signed up for St Vincent’s home care but when they asked her to be part of the trial four months ago, the 79-year-old said yes because she wanted to help. Although, truth be told, her expectations were low.
Nevertheless, when she got the call, she says: “I was so overtaken by how responsive she was. It was impressive for a robot.”
“She’d always ask ‘how you are today?’ and that gives you an opportunity if you’re feeling sick to say you felt sick, or I just say ‘I’m fine, thank you’.”
“She would go on to ask questions – ‘have you had a chance to step outside today?’”
Aida would also ask what Rolls had planned for the day and “she would respond to that properly”.
“If I would say I’m going shopping, she’d say nice shopping or food shopping? I found it entertaining.”
Bots easing the administrative burden
The trial, which has now wrapped up its first phase, is one of the ways in which advances in artificial intelligence are being taken up in healthcare.
Digital health company Healthily approached St Vincent’s about the trial to use its generative AI technology to provide social interaction, as well as an opportunity for home care clients to log any health issues or concerns for a staff member to follow up.
Dean Jones, national director of St Vincent’s At Home, says the service being trialled does not replace any face to face interactions.
“Clients still receive a weekly face to face meeting, but between these meetings … the [AI] system allows a daily check-in, which can then escalate any potential concerns to either our team or a client’s family,” Jones says.
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Dr Tina Campbell, the managing director of Healthily, says there haven’t been any adverse incidents reported from the St Vincent’s trial.
The company uses open AI “with very clear guardrails and prompts” to ensure the conversation is safe and mechanisms are in place to respond to serious health issues quickly, Campbell says. For example, if a client is experiencing chest pains, it would be flagged with the care team and the call ended so the person could dial triple zero.
Campbell believes AI has an important role amid significant workforce challenges across the healthcare sector.
“What we can do very safely, with technology like this, is reduce the admin burden on the workforce so qualified health professionals can focus on doing the job that they’re trained to do,” she says.
AI not as new as you might think
Prof Enrico Coiera, the founder of the Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, says older forms of artificial intelligence have been a standard part of healthcare for a long time, often in “back office services” such as interpreting medical images, cardiograms and pathology test results.
“Any computer program that carries…
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