Asian Institute of Medical Sciences, India launches Covid-19 chatbot: How it works

The Asian Institute of Medical Sciences’ chatbot can be accessed on mobile and desktop.

The Covid-19 chatbot asks a series of questions to determine if the person may be infected. (Asian Institute of Medical Sciences)

There have been quite a few chatbots on Covid-19 available on different platforms. The Asian Institute of Medical Sciences, India has also created a chatbot which can be accessed on mobile and desktop. It is also available in English and Hindi.

For its Covid-19 chatbot, the medical institute said it sources its information from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India. It essentially asks a series of questions to the user to determine if they have any Covid-19 symptoms. It first takes the user's personal information like their age and gender. The chatbot will then start asking questions based on the symptoms of Covid-19. It also provides animated GIFs of the symptoms making the conversation more interactive.

The questions include knowing the person's current temperature and finding out if they have any dry cough, runny nose or sore throat, or none of these. There's a second section of symptoms with options like difficulty in breathing, drowsiness and severe weakness. It also takes down the person's recent travel history.

Following this, the chatbot will ask about the person's past medical history like diabetes, high blood pressure and any organ disease. The user can select these options as applicable. Based on the results, the chatbot will determine if the person has Covid-19 or not. Interested users can also share their phone to get regular updates on Covid-19.

Similar to this, there are other Covid-19 chatbots like the WHO on WhatsApp. There's the Indian government's MyGov Corona chatbot as well on WhatsApp and Telegram. Users can refer to these chatbots which provide information from reliable sources.