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An AI assistant that conducts telephone consultations with patients is being trialed in the NHS to help clinicians monitor people with long-term illness. In the trial phase, the virtual assistant, called Dora Care, is designed to deliver safe and empathetic phone calls for people with osteoporosis—a bone-weakening condition that affects 3.5 million people in the U.K., particularly women and those over 50.
Fracture liaison services, which monitor these patients, have struggled with staffing shortages in many regions of the U.K., and with fracture treatment costing the NHS an estimated £4.5 billion each year, researchers at the University of York are investigating if the technology can safely support routine checkups.
Dr. Kate Preston, from the University of York's Center for Assuring Autonomy, said, "One of the first challenges with this project is: Can AI technology be empathetic and have the desired effect on a patient who is perhaps feeling vulnerable or unwell?
"Alongside this issue is the question of how we make the technology safe enough to assist in the work of trained clinicians, providing the appropriate information to allow medical decisions to be made for the best possible care of their patients."
The two-year project uses generative AI to hold natural, spoken conversations with patients over the phone. To ensure the AI does not sound robotic or unsympathetic, linguistics experts first analyzed empathetic behaviors by human clinicians.
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