How we Built a Trusted Patient AI Chatbot with Vasculitis Ireland Awareness
ReganByte partnered with Vasculitis Ireland Awareness to create Dwayne, an AI chatbot designed to give patients, carers, and families access to expert-reviewed information in clear, understandable language whenever they need it.
What Features Does Dwyane Have?
We presented our list of feature suggestions to Vasculitis Ireland Awareness, where we had collaborative discussions to prioritise what features they would like to use for Dwayne in line with their budget. We showcase some of these features below, but there are many more features available with our chatbots.
Multilingual
We only need the source information in one language and our solution will handle the translations from these verified information sources in over 30 languages.
Speech Input / Output
Due to a number of reasons, having the ability for Dwayne to accept and return information via talking was critical.
Collate User Feedback
Coming in a release this week, we will now produce a short thumbs up/down feedback option to help enhance our already enriched qualititive data.
News Feed
As there is some fantastic work going on across the world to help people with these rare diseases, we wanted to ensure users had access to the latest information.
“The Chatbot answers are excellent – both accurate and measured at the same time with appropriate caveats. Quite remarkable!”
Dr. Mark McClure
“I asked Dwayne all the questions I had when I was first diagnosed ... and had a very uncertain future in front of me. It did a fantastic job.”
Cecil Armstrong
“Dwayne is positioned exactly where a new AI-powered chat bot should be: focused on a specific use case and carefully set up to be trustworthy and safe.”
Prof. Mark Little
What Problems Were We Trying to Solve?
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Complex Medical Terminology
Complex medical terminology can often feel daunting for patients and families to consume, making it hard to find clear, safe answers between appointments.
Sure and Trusted Information
Patients and carers often struggle to find clear information they can trust. Without verified sources, they risk confusion or incorrect assumptions that add stress.
Accessibility
A lack of accessible and multilingual information can leave patients and families feeling excluded and unsure where to turn for safe, understandable answers.
Will a Dwayne-Like Chatbot Work for Your Organisation?
In short, yes. Working with ReganByte will ensure that your AI integration and chatbot development follows strict guidelines. We conduct thorough assessments to ensure:
Data privacy and security compliance.
Knowledge bases are verified and locked down.
Clinical oversight and expert collaboration are in place.
Accessibility, multilingual testing and governance are prioritised.
We Didn't Stop There
We firmly believe in the importance of a continued relationship post deployment of our services and Dwayne was no different. As part of our package we include the production of MI dashboards, which automatically categorise and analyse the data to produce valuable pseudonymised insights specific to your organisation.
For Dwayne, this data was invaluable to helping us prioritise and refine what our users needed for a Phase 2 deployment.
266
Responses generated in the first three weeks post deployment.
+52%
Increase in unique visitors to the VIA website in the first three weeks post deployment.
5
Dwayne had conversations in 5 different languages so far, with very positive feedback received.
4
The average number of questions asked by users in a conversation with Dwayne.
The Step-By-Step Process
September 2024
Discovery
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Discovery workshops with VIA and obtaining board sign off
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Identifying key patient and carer challenges
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Gathering insights from medical professionals and industry experts
October 2024
Design
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Solidifying the user requirements
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Creating knowledge base drafts for review
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Creating consumable technical design artefacts on E2E solution
October - November 2024
Development
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Technical development
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Rounds of internal and closed group testing, with refinements ongoing
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Development of additional features requested by VIA
November 2024 (Pilot)
Deployment
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Pilot launch with real patients
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Refining based on feedback and clinical/expert input
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Website development and including privacy policy updates, UX etc.
My Personal Connection
My wife was diagnosed with vasculitis in May 2021 and it changed our lives forever. It took over eight years for her to receive a diagnosis and when she did at last, we entered into a new world of medically complex terminology, a lot of administrative burden to ensure a constant line of communication between her multiple Consultants, a lot of medication trial and error and new symptoms. It was a scary time and unfortunately this was not made easier by the fact that she permanently lost her central vision in May 2022.
Throughout this experience, I often had questions after appointments that I did not want to ask in clinical settings. I didn't want to take up her valuable appointment time, a fear that was shared by many other family and friends of those diagnosed with the condition. I desperately sought clear, trusted information in simple language; I wanted to be fully informed to help her as much as possible. But finding this information was extremely difficult and on my quest I found some 'scary facts' that I believed to be real about her condition.
This personal journey is what inspired me to build Dwayne for Vasculitis Ireland Awareness. We now have a tool to support other patients and families with reliable answers whenever they need them.
