Project HealthLine
Speech Interfaces
For Healthcare Information Access In
Underserved Communities
Jahanzeb Sherwani, Rahul Tongia, Roni Rosenfeld
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Mehtab Karim, Yousuf Memon
Community Health Sciences
Aga Khan University
SLT4D
Speech and Language Technology For Development
Can Speech be a Compelling Technology
For Under-Developed Populations?
Illiteracy and semi-literacy
Written and unwritten languages
Accessibility
Technological
Economical
Social
Conventional IT for Development
Source: http://www.usp.ac.fj/jica/ict_research/pfnet_case_study/research.html
Conventional IT For Development
Requires field deployment of many PCs
Requires Internet connectivity
(broadband for multimedia)
Assumes literate users
Users need to learn to use computers
Restricted to languages with written form
Requires system maintenance and upgrades at
the user end
Risk of accidental PC misuse
Risk of computer viruses
Speech Technologies
(http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia_near_east/features/phil_telcom11_03.html)
Speech Technologies
Requires deployment of telephones only
Already widely deployed!
Literacy is not required (how do you spell Diarrhea?)
Interaction is conversational – Requires less
adaptation by users
Any spoken language can be supported, including
switching among languages in the same session
System maintained and upgraded centrally
No risk of accidental PC misuse
No risk of computer viruses
What Can Speech Do
For Under-Served Communities?
Information access
Information entry
Information sharing
Access to services
Access to automated
decision-making processes
…
Healthcare Information Access
“Providing access to reliable health
information for health workers in
developing countries is potentially the
single most cost-effective and achievable
strategy for sustainable improvement in
health care”
– R. Smith, British Medical Journal (1997)
Access Mechanisms
speech
text/images
Community
Health
Worker
text/
images/
video
Health
Information
Access Through Speech
Speech
Interface
Community
Health
Worker
Speech
System
Health
Information
Healthcare Delivery In Pakistan
180 million people
Urdu is main language, but not first language!
Acute shortage of M.D.s
“Lady Health Workers” (LHWs)
100,000 Gov’t trained, first-line health workers
In-home visits, triage and liaison
Children’s health, reproductive health, childbirth,…
“Lady Health Visitors” (LHVs)
Better trained, typically stay at clinics
Nurses, M.D.s
Some Daunting Challenges
Urdu Data Collection
Urdu speech and acoustic models
Lexicon
Pronunciations
Grammar and language model
User training
User testing
Impact assessment
Scale-up and dissemination
Continuation funding!
The Most Daunting Of All
What are the true information needs of
Community Healthcare Workers?
Will Community Healthcare Workers
use a system such as ours?
Under what conditions?
Contextual Inquiry and Needs
Assessment are crucial
Needs Assessment
Female-Mediated
Needs Assessment
Interactions Styles For
Healthcare Information Access
Diagnosis help through step-by-step interview
2. Open ended question answering system
3. Searching text resources by speech
We prepared mock-up demonstrations for all 3
Potential uses
1.
Real-time diagnosis
Offline diagnosis
Offline training
Demo 1
Diagnosis Through Interview
Thank you, Microsoft!
For more information, see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~healthline
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