They asked us to help them with a few things on the Covid-19 chatbot they built for the National Department of Health, which is essentially – and we don’t use that word lightly – a WhatsApp-based helpline that supports people with Covid-related health queries, and points them in the direction of accurate info if needed.
The bot was picked up by the World Health Organisation as well as several governments including Australia, New Zealand, Ethiopia and Mozambique. To date it has graced the palms of well over 20 million people.
Most of the props lie squarely at the feet of Praekelt.org, but we’re honoured to have been involved with some of the innovation, as we were asked to share our experience and expertise in automation, Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and exploratory data analysis.