What can Bard — Google’s new artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot — tell us about the value of WiRED’s Community Health Worker (CHW) Program and training modules? To find the answers we asked Bard two questions about disease burden worldwide. Following each of Bard’s answers, is WiRED’s response.
Question #1: What diseases are most impacting global populations?
Bard: Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, respiratory disease and diabetes pose the most danger to human health, especially in underserved countries. NCDs are largely preventable by reducing risk factors, raising awareness and effecting early diagnosis and treatment.
WiRED: Years before Bard was developed by Google, WiRED was providing global health education programs to address the causes, treatments and prevention of the NCDs that plague so many communities. Today, WiRED’s CHWs focus their efforts in areas where doctors are scarce and access to health care is limited. The hundreds of modules in our collection offer CHWs up-to-date, peer-reviewed courses on NCDs. CHWs teach their communities about adopting healthy lifestyles, school them on signs and symptoms of NCDs, refer people to clinics and follow up on their care.
Question #2: What infectious diseases are most impacting global populations?
Bard: Among the slew of infectious diseases the most common ones include respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Strategies to prevent and control infectious disease include vaccination, safe water and sanitation, good hygiene, early diagnosis and treatment and surveillance and response.
WiRED: As trusted members of their communities, our CHWs teach people how to prevent infection and explain why testing and vaccination are important. CHWs not only study hundreds of diseases through WiRED training modules but they continue to learn about infections and acquire new skills through WiRED’s Continuing Medical Education Program, a yearly requirement. CHWs employ these strategies through community education and health screening. WiRED’s team in Kenya has just launched a Health Screening Clinic to bring health care and awareness into the field and help identify health problems early on when they are most treatable.
Asking Bard our two general questions illustrates the serious global disease and healthcare problems on our planet and points out the breadth and depth of the WiRED CHW program. CHWs play a leading part on the global world stage as they continue to support health interventions within communities in need.
What is the Bard AI Program?
In Bard’s own words:
Bard is a large language model, also known as a conversational AI or chatbot trained to be informative and comprehensive. I am trained on a massive amount of text data, and I am able to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions. For example, I can provide summaries of factual topics or create stories.