The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the launch of S.A.R.A.H., a digital health promoter prototype with enhanced empathetic response powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI).
According to the statement released by the World Body on Tuesday stated SARAH is a Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health that represents an evolution of AI-powered health information avatars, using new language models and cutting-edge technology.
This unveiling was made ahead of the World Health Day, Sunday 7th April, which focused on ‘My Health, My Right’, it revealed further that the prototype, SARAH can engage users 24 hours a day in eight languages on multiple health topics, on any device.
Reacting to the prototype unveiling, WHO Director-General, Dr Tedro Ghebreyesus said, “the future of health is digital, and supporting countries to harness the power of digital technologies for health is a priority for World Health Organization”.
Ghebreyesus added that “S.A.R.A.H. gives us a glimpse of how artificial intelligence could be used in future to improve access to health information in a more interactive way.
The WHO DG called on the research community to help the organization continue to explore how this technology could narrow inequities and help people access up-to-date, reliable health information.
The Organization stated further that the digital health promoter is trained to provide information across major health topics, including healthy habits and mental health, to help people optimize their health and well-being journey.
Also aims to provide an additional tool for people to realize their rights to health, wherever they are. Sarah, has the ability to support people in developing better understanding of risk factors.
“For some of the leading causes of death in the world, including cancer, heart disease, lung disease, and diabetes, also can help people access up-to-date information on quitting tobacco, being active, eating healthy diet, and de-stressing among other things.
Powered by generative AI rather than a pre-set algorithm or script helping the prototype to provide more accurate responses in real-time.
Engage in dynamic personalized conversations at scale that more accurately mirror human interactions and provide nuanced, empathetic responses to users in a judgment-free environment.
WHO called for continued research on this new technology to explore potential benefits to public health and to better understand the challenges.
While AI has enormous potential to strengthen public health it also raises important ethical concerns, including equitable access, privacy, safety and accuracy, data protection, and bias.
Continuous evaluation and refinement as part of this project emphasize WHO’s dedication to bringing health information closer to people while maintaining the highest standards of ethics and evidence-based content.
Developers, policy makers and health care providers need to address these ethics and human rights issues when developing and deploying AI to ensure that all people can benefit from it.
The Sarah project strives for continuous learning and development of a prototype that can inspire reliable, responsible, accessible information, adding that previous iterations of it were used to disseminate critical public health messages, under the name Florence, during the COVID-19 pandemic on the virus, vaccines, tobacco use, healthy eating and physical activity.
