French Researchers Reveal Chatbot: Poor vaccine coverage rates are a major public health challenge in Europe. France for example has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world, with only 25% of its population covered against measles.
This makes it all the more important that we use every available means to protect people from this contagious disease and other preventable illnesses.
Fortunately, new research offers us hope for better solutions to overcome reluctance towards vaccines, which is often due to misconceptions about their safety or insufficient knowledge about their benefits.
Cognitive scientists at Université de Lyon (France) integrated artificial intelligence into automated chatbots engaging with potential patients on social media channels such as Facebook Messenger or Twitter Direct Messages. The bots asked users to make a choice between different vaccine options.
French Researchers Reveal Chatbot, The chatbots used the answers given by the user to adapt their behavior in order to provide personalized information and convince patients of vaccines’ benefits.
The results, presented at the international conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI) last October, showed that many participants changed their minds about vaccines after a chatbot conversation.
“It remains to be shown whether the effects of chatbot interaction are lasting and whether they are the same across age groups, and among those most resistant to vaccination”, emphasized the authors of the study with predominantly young and well-educated participants.
They added: “Half of the experimental group later tried to persuade others to get vaccinated, with three-quarters of them stating they drew information provided by the chatbot to do so.”
Researchers in France believe that technology-based communication, such as chatbots, may have a beneficial impact on these statistics in the future.
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