WHO Health Alert Service: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Quick Response

WHO has upgraded the system with artificial intelligence for better WHO Health Alert service?

There are certain AI features added to the WHO Health Alert service.  WHO Health Alert service on Messenger from Facebook has been upgraded with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that provide Messenger users with a better interactive experience, offer more accurate information, and allow WHO to respond more quickly. The service is part of WHO's continuing efforts to ensure that people have access to reliable and trustworthy sources of information on COVID-19 during the global pandemic.

Changes to the WHO Health Alert service are driven by two advanced AI features:

• AI-powered conversations: these allow individuals to type questions using natural language to receive official WHO health information, advice, and guidance on COVID-19. Using AI analysis, the service can cluster the most common questions into themes and guide the inclusion of new responses.
• Localized COVID-19 information: data on the latest official case counts for any country are instantly accessible, curated from official WHO COVID-19 information. It also includes the option to sign up for daily alerts.
• The WHO Health Alert service has already seen record-high levels of engagement, indicating a positive demand for the service. Within days of the AI upgrades, over 100 000 persons accessed the service and sent over 500 000 messages; they also requested data on countries more than 430 000 times, and logged 27 000 sign-ups for daily alerts. Returning users of the service rose to 80%. To date, the WHO Health Alert has received almost 4 million messages from over 540 000 users worldwide.

To limit the risks and maximize the opportunities intrinsic to the use of AI for health, WHO provides the following principles as the basis for AI regulation and governance:

• Protecting human autonomy: In the context of health care, this means that humans should remain in control of healthcare systems and medical decisions; privacy and confidentiality should be protected, and patients must give valid informed consent through appropriate legal frameworks for data protection.
• Promoting human well-being and safety and the public interest. The designers of AI technologies should satisfy regulatory requirements for safety, accuracy, and efficacy for well-defined use cases or indications. Measures of quality control in practice and quality improvement in the use of AI must be available.
• Ensuring transparency, explainability, and intelligibility. Transparency requires that sufficient information be published or documented before the design or deployment of an AI technology. Such information must be easily accessible and facilitate meaningful public consultation and debate on how the technology is designed and how it should or should not be used.
• Fostering responsibility and accountability. Although AI technologies perform specific tasks, it is the responsibility of stakeholders to ensure that they are used under appropriate conditions and by appropriately trained people. Effective mechanisms should be available for questioning and for redress for individuals and groups that are adversely affected by decisions based on algorithms.
• Ensuring inclusiveness and equity. Inclusiveness requires that AI for health be designed to encourage the widest possible equitable use and access, irrespective of age, sex, gender, income, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, or other characteristics protected under human rights codes.
• Promoting AI that is responsive and sustainable. Designers, developers, and users should continuously and transparently assess AI applications during actual use to determine whether AI responds adequately and appropriately to expectations and requirements. AI systems should also be designed to minimize their environmental consequences and increase energy efficiency. Governments and companies should address anticipated disruptions in the workplace, including training for healthcare workers to adapt to the use of AI systems, and potential job losses due to the use of automated systems.

These principles will guide the future of WHO to work to support efforts to ensure that the full potential of AI for healthcare and public health will be used for the benefit of all.