Population subgroup differences in the use of a COVID-19 chatbot

Laura C Schubel; Deliya B Wesley; Ethan Booker; John Lock; Raj M Ratwani

doi:10.1038/s41746-021-00405-8

Population subgroup differences in the use of a COVID-19 chatbot

NPJ Digit Med. 2021 Feb 19;4(1):30. doi: 10.1038/s41746-021-00405-8.

Authors

Laura C Schubel¹, Deliya B Wesley², Ethan Booker³, John Lock⁴, Raj M Ratwani⁵

Affiliations

¹ MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, Washington, DC, USA.
² MedStar Health Research Institute, Hyattsville, MD, USA.
³ MedStar Telehealth Innovation Center, Washington, DC, USA.
⁴ MedStar Health, Columbia, MD, USA.
⁵ MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, Washington, DC, USA. Raj.M.Ratwani@medstar.net.

Abstract

COVID-19 chatbots are widely used to screen for symptoms and disseminate information about the virus, yet little is known about the population subgroups that interact with this technology and the specific features that are used. An analysis of 1,000,740 patients invited to use a COVID-19 chatbot, 69,451 (6.94%) of which agreed to participate, shows differences in chatbot feature use by gender, race, and age. These results can inform future public health COVID-19 symptom screening and information dissemination strategies.