Novo Nordisk

Sickle Cell Disease Provider Chatbot

There is approximately 100k people in the US living with sickle cell disease (SCD). As a rare disease, SCD is often not treated effectively in the care setting with many providers not identifying the symptoms of the condition or understanding how to treat effectively. This situation is oftentimes complicated by compounding factors such as racial bias, medical staff unawareness, financial hardship, cultural distinctions, and lack of disease state expertise. To help reduce these detrimental factor at the provider level, this student team will work to design and develop a tool which would supply the physician with an easily accessible set of clinical and behavioral protocols to identify and best treat the SCD patient. This student team will work to create chatbot container utilizing chat features such as iMessage and Messenger. The core and primary function of this tool would be to work from the unique set of provider inputs to algorithmically train from these inputs to help lead/teach the physician a manner of care aligned to the physician’s personal care style, as well as the care (clinical and behavioral/emotional) of a particular SCD patient. Some of the key objectives this student team will work to evaluate when designing the SCD chatbot include: • Data models focused on SCD treatment and disease state – protocol data for clinical analysis and treatment • Demographic data as per SCD population • Analysis of emotional/behavioral/cultural attributes to determine the care data associated with treating SCD • The tool would ideally be capable of assessing the “care style” of the provider and align that to the patient need set. • Adopting the mobile moments (ease of access) from the message toolset, the chatbot could operate outside the application container and function in a conversational manner as a “friend” to the physician. The objectives this student team will work to achieve are: • A working prototype, end-user platform via iMessage and/or other messaging application • A solution accessible from smartphone • A name and branding for tool • An optimized user-centric (physician) designs and workflow (UX)