Development of virtual health assistant application

BACKGROUND

Ageing is a global trend. In the Western Pacific Region especially, countries and areas are experiencing population ageing at an accelerated pace. Population ageing has significant societal implications, but it also offers many opportunities for individuals and society as a whole. Seizing these opportunities takes time, but early action allows for countries to turn potential challenges into opportunities. Increased availability of technological advances—including big data, artificial intelligence, robotics and cloud computing—is allowing innovative care models to be implemented, empowering individuals to exert greater control over their health.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the need for digital innovations in care for older people, who are particularly susceptible to both the virus’ negative health effects, and the economic and social consequences of response measures to the pandemic. Social distancing and community quarantines disproportionately affect older people, who are more vulnerable to social isolation and who often rely on care networks for support. These measures also pose difficulties in maintaining a physically, socially and economically active lifestyle, which is essential for active ageing.

This Terms of Reference (TOR) relates to remote work to support the development of the digital product. The technology solution provider will work with the Innovation and Research (INR) unit of the Data, Strategy and Innovation (DSI) Group, under the supervision of the Coordinator DIA/INR.

Purpose

To support WHO WPRO’s Regional Action Plan for healthy ageing.

Description of the assignment

The objective of this project is to develop a virtual health assistant for older people in the Western Pacific Region, which will help promote both healthy ageing and important health and prevention information relevant to COVID-19. In a future iteration, the platform will enable delivering personalized care through user-specific “nudges”.

MVP

Using the lean methodology for software development, the purpose of this RFP is to select a suitable vendor to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) for non-personalized health promotion that can be piloted for usability and iterated for incremental developments in older people who have access to mobile devices and basic digital skills in the region. Dialog data will be provided by WPRO. 

Technical requirements for the MVP

A. Functionality

• • Humanoid interface: Example can be found on WHO HQ’s tobacco cessation initiative[1]. Tailor-made human-like cartoon avatars are also acceptable.
• • Back-end talking bot: The MVP can be built with either an expert system or Natural Language Processing framework, but the eventual product offering personalized care must be powered by AI.
• • Emotion detection: Nice-to-have
• • Information collection: For the MVP we do not need to collect any form of personal data or to utilize a third-party tool to collect and analyze end user behavior. Incremental developments may require the collection of certain personal data for personalized care delivery.

B. Design

• • User-centered design: User-friendly for older people and caregivers (involving older people as co-developers and debuggers)
• • Extensibility and flexibility: Design for future integration and interoperability with existing systems (e.g. EHRs)

C. Reliability

Production quality standard needs to be achieved by rigorous testing

D. Usability

The MVP must be easy to use and intuitive

E. Data privacy & security

Comply with highest standards of data privacy and safety. Privacy solution or policies must be included in the technical proposal.

F. Language

Standard English and Mandarin

G. License