ABSTRACT:
A chatbot can be a powerful tool to share accurate, non-judgmental, and private information about many different health topics. There are various chatbots already making a difference in improving access and strengthening health systems. How do you develop a chatbot? How do you even know if you should be developing one? These are the questions that we will answer in this workshop as we take you through the steps of deciding if a chatbot makes sense to achieve your goals, how to develop one, and, very importantly, how to evaluate if it’s reaching your target population and having a positive impact. Developing a chatbot can sound intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be! You can use platforms that offer no-code tools to build conversation flows or work with a developer or tech partner. We’ll take you through the steps of developing a prototype, training an AI model, and improving your chatbot through iterative user testing. Evaluating the impact of your chatbot is key to understanding how well it is working, but you don’t need to design a whole RCT! There are various levels of evaluation, and we will take you through the basic, intermediate, and comprehensive options. We will go through examples of some important variables to evaluate and what these look like at each level, including reach, engagement, knowledge, behaviour change, and satisfaction. By the end of this session, we hope you will have a clearer idea of how a chatbot might be useful in your context, what steps you can take to develop one, and how you can evaluate it. We will be guiding you through the planning process, so you will benefit most if you come with an idea for a chatbot and/or a target population in mind.