The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has launched a COVID-19 bot Thursday, which can help screen Americans who are concerned they are having symptoms associated with the new coronavirus.
The bot is deemed on the “Coronavirus Self-Checker” on the CDC’s website, which can gauge the symptoms and risk factors for people and determine whether they should see a doctor.
The COVID-19 bot does not make a diagnosis or offer any treatment. It is just a guide to help you discern whether you require medical care.
On Friday, two Microsoft officials published a blog post in which they said this “move marks the latest example of a U.S. health organization tapping into the tech giant’s Healthcare Bot service.”
Hadas Bitran and Jean Gabarra wrote, “CDC’s new bot can quickly assess the symptoms and risk factors for people worried about infection, provide information and suggest a next course of action such as contacting a medical provider or, for those who do not need in-person medical care, managing the illness safely at home.”
Bitran is a group manager of Microsoft Healthcare Israel and Gabarra is a general manager of Health AI.
Microsoft is freely offering coronavirus response template through its Healthcare Bot service in order to help free up doctors and health workers to treat patients in dire need.
According to an article published in Nextgov, the bot is a cloud service “that empowers healthcare organizations to build and deploy,” customizable, AI-powered virtual health assistants and chatbots “to enhance their processes, self-service, and cost reduction efforts.”
The templates in the bot include a “risk assessment based on CDC guidelines, clinical triage based on CDC protocols, up-to-date answers to frequently asked questions and worldwide metrics—all related to COVID-19.”
Apart from the CDC, the Seattle-based Virginia Mason Health System and Providence and the Southeast health care provider Novant Health have deployed COVID-19 bots powered by Microsoft’s initiative.
Bitran and Gabarra wrote, “Across all users, customized instances of Microsoft’s Healthcare Bot service are now fielding more than 1 million messages per day from members of the public who are concerned about COVID-19 infections—a number we expect to escalate quickly to meet growing needs.”
A Microsoft spokesperson told Nextgov that the bot runs on Microsoft Azure but the CDC owns and maintains the tool.
The spokesperson said, “The CDC does not share any of the personal information you provide to the Triage Bot with Microsoft.”
Worldwide, COVID-19 has affected 276,293 and killed 11,421 so far. In the United States, the virus has sickened 19,772 and killed 279 so far.
