Seoul Metropolitan Government expects AI-powered Vaccine Care Call service to dramatically reduce workload of public health centres and allow rapid response to treating side effects.
In a bid to reduce the workload of public medical centres, Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has introduced an artificial intelligence-based service “Vaccine Care Call” to monitor reported signs of side effects after Covid-19 vaccination.
When health officials register the information of those reported to have side effects in the system, SKT Telecom’s AI-powered assistant service Nugu calls the recipients to monitor their health conditions, such as pain, fever, muscle aches, and headaches.
However, human officials will make a call if the reported symptoms seem to be serious or acute. Nugu will record the calls and categorise them by symptoms so that public health centres can refer to them whenever needed. This will allow officials to keep track of the symptoms reported and take swift action, if required.
The SMG ran a pilot of Vaccine Care Call with the Dobong-gu district office in October 2021. During the programme, Nugu handled 3,141 calls, or 85 per cent of the total reports, reducing more than 100 calls a day normally picked up by human officials. As a result, healthcare workers showed high satisfaction rates with the programme.
“Before introducing the Vaccine Care Call, we received too many calls to handle in a day. But thanks to the AI call, we were able to work more efficiently. Above all, it allowed our officials to deal with other tasks such as rapid response to acute side effects or compensation programme for recipients with side effects,” said the official in charge at the Dobong-gu district office.
SMG reports the programme will be rolled out to all 25 districts in Seoul after running in 13 districts, initially.
The Vaccine Care Call aims to provide excellent quality of calls and alleviate the workload of healthcare personnel. Its voice recognition rate for casual conversation stood at 96 per cent, and only two per cent of the total calls were interrupted and failed to complete.
“Thanks to the [memorandum of understanding], we can now engage in swift monitoring with AI technologies. Monitoring through calls that used to be done by our officials will also become more efficient. We will be able to rapidly reach out to citizens showing side effects,” said Park Yoo-mi, director general of Citizens’ Health Bureau.
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Quelle/Source: Smart Cities World, 31.12.2021
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