Question Answering Chatbot for rare diseases (child melanoma)
The purpose of this project was building a smart chat bot capable of providing answers to rare diseases patients' relatives. The chat bot aims to parents of children suffering from paediatric melanoma, an ultra-rare condition with an extremely low prevalence that differs significantly from the adult disease.
At the discovery phase, the clinical side of the team conducted interviews in order to get a better understanding of the real problem. There was a real need to find a solution to the limited access to reliable medical information. Sometimes, families were learning from forums or other non-scientific sources of information. We decided to create a database with reliable and well-organized information. We also consider the necessity to know the nearest specialized hospital, in emergency situations.
Our team decided to build a chatbot for Telegram programming in Python and named it RareBot. The code implemented machine learning tools and multilanguage capability so the user can interact in any language. Other features added to our proposal were the correction of words during the interaction and the inclusion of various questions for the validation of the correct type of melanoma. The last one was done prior displaying the information in response to the questions. Our chatbot also considered the concurrence of multiple users simultaneously. Finally, the RareBot provided to the users the closest certified center according to their geolocation.
