The use of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for health care information continues to grow amid questions about their accuracy, safety and reliability and excitement over their potential to improve access to care. A new, two-year, up to $7.3M project at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is focused on reducing errors and providing feasible mechanisms to provide human-centered input and values into the design of chatbots.
Funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), the team will create the Vanderbilt Chatbot Accuracy and Reliability Evaluation System (V-CARES) that aims to provide valuable guidance for current and future health chatbots and improve the safety, utility and acceptability of the technology for the general public, patients, health professionals, caregivers and health care administrators. The project will use mental health as a demonstration case.
The system will be developed by an interdisciplinary team led by Susannah Rose, MSSW, PhD (PI), in the Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at VUMC, and Zhijun Yin, PhD (Co-PI) also in DBMI. Vanderbilt School of Nursing Associate Professor Shelagh Mulvaney, PhD, will serve as a co-investigator. Mulvaney is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on the design of patient-facing health technologies in informatics, mobile health and text messaging. “This project provides the opportunity to improve the safety, acceptability and accessibility of technology-augmented mental health care and inform health policy to support the use of these systems,” Mulvaney said.
“Working with Dr. Mulvaney will be one of the highlights of this project. Her expertise is critical in the development of patient-centered and safe health technology development,” Rose said.
Established in 2022, ARPA-H is an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that supports transformative, high-impact research into biomedical and health breakthroughs. The ARPA-H project awardees are announced here https://arpa-h.gov/research-and-funding/mission-office-iso/awardees