The Challenge

Talking about women’s health issues is a big taboo in most parts of India. The goal is to create an AI assistant that can help women living in rural and non-metro cities find information and remedial solutions about women’s health.

Content flow for the article:

Women’s health & Taboo: Condition, Disease, Decisions, Symptoms, Cause

To start off with this task, I had to gather real-time information on women’s health. I had no background in women’s health. And specifically, to understand what could be the ‘taboo’ health issues. Hence, as a start of my research, I started speaking to two doctors whose time and inputs I appreciate, and further to my research, I spoke to a few female friends of mine whose inputs provided empathy to my research.

Based on my discussions with the doctors, I listed out the most common but tough-to-talk health problems women face:

1. Menstrual cycle
2. Breast cancer
3. UTI — Urinary Tract Infection
4. STD — Sexually Transmitted Disease
5. Abortion
6. Ovarian and Cervical Cancer
7. Polycystic Ovarian Disease
8. Menopause
9. First-time bleed
10. Tubectomy
11. Breastfeeding
12. Mental Health

Further to my research, I looked for relevant data on the internet, keeping in the loop the doctor and a female friend of mine. I got a fair understanding on what is the ground reality on what are the most common situations where a woman needs help on her health from a personal level.

I managed to classify them situations into 3 types, based on the nature and background of each situation.

..and added the 12 health issues mentioned above under each type.

Although one may argue with the classifications done above, I agree there could be an issue/situation which could possibly be an overlap.

Further to the classification, I wanted to understand the cause and symptoms of each situation Which would, in turn, help me add value to the bot in making.

Hence, I continued my interviews and research on the internet to gather the information that would Bring structure to the chatbot in making.

So, taking each situation I mapped the ’cause’, ‘symptoms /diagnostic’, and the ‘help’ that would be required to make the right decisions for each of the 12 stated tough-to-talk health issues.

I started off with ‘conditions’

Structuring the chatbot

Chatbot Scope:

1. Provide information and remedial solutions on women’s health.
2. Guide the user to diagnosis having gathered inputs through interactions between user and bot.

Knowing the stakeholders:

• Early Adopter
• Students, Teenagers, Working-class women, Married women, Housewives, Mothers, and more...
• Age group range in focus: 16–42

Stakeholder Situations:

• When they realize they need help know more about a situation that they cannot openly discuss with their parents, family, friends, husband, etc.
• When they are unsure of a medicine, test, process.
• When they do not know about the issue, unaware of the process, Symptoms, commonality, approach.
• When they need information, knowledge to help Access their situation.

After defining the early adopters and most likely situations, I defined the chatbot personality.

Chatbot Personality: Friendly, Sister feeling, Nurse, Feminine.

Name of the chatbot: HEALIA

Must have features on the chatbot:

• Generic information on women's health
• Remedial solutions Vast range of symptom and cause repository
• Doctor/treatment/hospital/medicinal recommendations
• Articles and exercises on health betterment
• When they are unsure of a medicine, test, process. Updated information on banned medicines / medical practices / validity etc.
• A doctor’s consultation via call, video call, real-time booking.

Importance of Voice UI for this situation

Looking at the audience who would be using this, i.e. women from non-metro cities, villages, taluks, towns might not have access to a smartphone, or sometimes even a phone. Let’s say they have a smartphone, but the probability of them having mediums like messenger, WhatsApp, etc., to interact with chatbots is quite low. Whereas, having a Voice UI built on AI, which by creating helpline numbers would help a larger or most needy Set of audiences. As women in villages, towns can still have access to keypad phones, public phones. I do not know how practical this would sync with technical limitations, but, it is a fix worth recommending.

The Chatbot flow

The 4 navigational pillars.

1- Don’t know: the users say anything the chatbot won’t ever be prepared to answer.

2- Known problem (Disease, Condition, Decision): the users ask/talk about a problem or a category of the problem the chatbot knows.

3- Known symptoms: the user asks/talks about symptoms the chatbot understands.

4- Known cause: the user asks/talks about a cause, background the chatbot knows.

Competitor watch

OneRemission — This New York-based company launched its chatbot with the aim to help ease the life of those involved in the fight against cancer with the information they need. The app empowers them by providing a comprehensive list of diets, exercises, and post-cancer practices, curated by Integrative Medicine experts so that they don’t need to constantly rely on a doctor.

Youper — Basing itself on the latest scientific research, Youper’s A.I. monitors and improves users’ emotional health with quick personalized conversations using psychological techniques. To further help one improve their emotional health, the app features personalized meditations as well as the ability to track mood and monitor emotional health.

Safedrugbot — is a chat messaging service that offers assistant-like support to health professionals, doctors who need appropriate data about the use of drugs during breastfeeding.

Babylon Health — The British subscription, online medical consultation, and health service, Babylon Health, was founded in 2013 and is now valued at more than $2 billion. The company offers A.I. consultation based on personal medical history and common medical knowledge as well as live video consultation with a real doctor whenever a patient needs it.

Florence — The chatbot is basically a “personal nurse” in the color blue, and works on Facebook Messenger, Skype, or Kik. “She” can remind patients to take their pills, which might be a handy feature for older patients. You just write the name of the medicine in chat, the number of times a day you must take it, and at what time. Then, Florence sends you a message in chat every time you must take the pill.

Your.Md — The free platform offers actionable health information based on highly accurate sources and lets the user make the best choices for his health. It is basically a symptom checker powered by artificial intelligence. It’s available on iOS, Android, Facebook Messenger, Slack, KIK, Telegram, as well as a browser version.

Ada Health — Over 1.5 million people have already tried the health companion app which can assess the user’s health based on the indicated symptoms using its vast, A.I.-based database.

Sensely — The virtual medical assistant named Molly can assess the patient’s symptoms using speech, text, images, and video. As the user wishes, it can use text or speech to communicate. Based on the gathered data as well as the information fed to its smart algorithm, Sensely interprets the user’s symptoms and recommends a diagnosis.

Buoy Health — The chatbot thoroughly asks you about the details of your medical state and offers you various solutions and actionable steps to take.

Infermedica — leverages machine learning technology to power the symptom-checker chatbot, Symptomate. The platform runs online and on mobile phones as a chatbot or voice-based application. It assesses the user’s health status and based on the symptoms.

GYANT — is a health chatbot that asks patients to understand their symptoms and then sends the data to doctors, who provide diagnoses and prescribe medicine in real-time. The service is available on Facebook Messenger or Alexa, but the team plans to release it on every messaging platform soon.

Cancer Chatbot — It is a helpful resource for cancer patients, caregivers, friends, and family on Facebook Messenger. The chatbot offers plenty of resources for patients from chemo tips and tricks to free services. It provides resources for caregivers to ease the burden of caring and making their lives easier.

User Stories

Conversation of Kavita with Healia’s Voice UI through a phone

Conversation of Kavita with Healia’s Conversational UI through Facebook Messenger

Conclusions and Learnings

This exercise was different. The users of this chatbot are special and knowing more about the challenges faced by this set of users only motivated me to come up with some reasonable solution. My respect to the women who are fighting these issues and staying strong!

This chatbot — Healia, although this is just an exploration of possibilities, the work that was put in to while gathering information helped me gauge the user’s circumstances and widened my perspective and knowledge from a scientific point of view.

Be there a chance to connect, I would be happy to get in touch! 🤝

Radhakrishna Aekbote, UX Design | UX Research | Product | Mentor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhakrishnaaekbote/