Our tiny thumbs clock an average of 100,000 steps, the equivalent of two marathons a year scrolling through social media. Whether it’s funny Tiktok videos, Facebook posts from a friend’s recent holiday or missile attack videos from Ukrain, a world of information passes through our fingertips while we barely give any proper attention to it let alone absorb it. Thousands of artificial intelligence (AI) guided content are fighting to get our attention. Ironically, this tsunami of information makes it extremely difficult to find the right one at the right time. So, we remain content-rich but knowledge poor.
Healthcare is one area where the importance of good health education is critical. The positive correlation between a good education and good health has been long established fact [1]. A 2015 UK govt survey showed that nearly a million people in England who speaks little or no English are more likely to be in poor health compared to their English speaking counterpart [2]. Many social, cultural and religious barriers reduce their interactions with the health authorities. Due to the language barrier, they remain beyond the reach of health education material published in English. There are efforts from the national health services (NHS) to produce health education materials in various ethnic languages but in all fairness, people barely notice anything offscreen these days. No one has the time to read a pamphlet.
The recent pandemic presented many health authorities around the world with the challenge of containing misinformation [3]. The search for health education online is on the rise, and in the absence of quality health education, inevitably, the void gets quickly filled up by misinformation flooding the internet.
To effectively disseminate information, content needs to be short, digestible and delivered to the right person at the right time. Despite all the negative attention it has received over the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) can help us bridge the health education gap.
MedAi uses artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver personalised healthcare services remotely to patients in their native languages. We are creating short health education videos for several ethnolinguistic groups based on their disease prevalence. Following a medical consultation conducted through our digital health platform, patients can subscribe to personalised health education content that will be delivered to them via the MedAi health mobile app.
Relevant Links
- The relationship between education and health: reducing disparities through a contextual approach. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5880718/]
- People who cannot speak English well are more likely to be in poor health. [ https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/articles/peoplewhocannotspeakenglishwellaremorelikelytobeinpoorhealth/2015-07-09]
- Health misinformation a ‘threat to public health’ — Leaders call out sources of disinformation, social media sites [ https://www.thenationshealth.org/content/52/1/1.1 ]