ArticleJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2022
Chatbot use cases in the Covid-19 public health response.
Article in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Internet-based Surveillance Systems and Infectious Diseases Prediction: An Updated Review of the Last 10 Years and Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2024Pooled it
- General Characteristics and Design Taxonomy of Chatbots for COVID-19: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- Conversational AI and Vaccine Communication: Systematic Review of the Evidence.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Pooled it
- Impact of Oral Health Chatbot With and Without Toothbrushing Training on Childhood Caries.International dental journal · 2025Trial
- Engagement with a Chatbot-based Intervention for the delivery of mailed at-home COVID-19 Testing: a Descriptive Log Analysis Study from the SCALE-UP II Trial.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Simplifying Public Health Recommendations: Use of a Public CDC Chatbot During the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2022-2024.Public health reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974) · 2026Article
- What can chatbot conversations reveal about vaccine concerns? An observational topic modelling study for public health infoveillance.BMJ digital health & AI · 2026Article
- What patients want from healthcare chatbots: insights from a mixed-methods study.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Opportunities and Challenges for an Organizational Digital Public Health Strategy in a Provincial Public Health Program in Canada: Qualitative Description of Practitioner Perspectives.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Women's Preferences and Willingness to Pay for AI Chatbots in Women's Health: Discrete Choice Experiment Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Era of Generalist Conversational Artificial Intelligence to Support Public Health Communications.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Artificial intelligence applied to the study of human milk and breastfeeding: a scoping review.International breastfeeding journal · 2024Article
- Transforming Health Care Through Chatbots for Medical History-Taking and Future Directions: Comprehensive Systematic Review.JMIR medical informatics · 2024Review
- Implementation of a Web-Based Chatbot to Guide Hospital Employees in Returning to Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Development and Before-and-After Evaluation.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Roles, Users, Benefits, and Limitations of Chatbots in Health Care: Rapid Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Review
- Chatbot for Social Need Screening and Resource Sharing With Vulnerable Families: Iterative Design and Evaluation Study.JMIR human factors · 2024Article
- Implementation of Anxiety UK's Ask Anxia Chatbot Service: Lessons Learned.JMIR human factors · 2024Article
- Potential applications and implications of large language models in primary care.Family medicine and community health · 2024Article
- Comparison of the Performance of ChatGPT, Claude and Bard in Support of Myopia Prevention and Control.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2024Article
- Patient Acceptability of Symptom Screening and Patient Education Using a Chatbot for Autoimmune Inflammatory Diseases: Survey Study.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo identify chatbot use cases deployed for public health response activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. MATERIAL AND
methodsWe searched PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Knowledge, and Google Scholar in October 2020 and performed a follow-up search in July 2021. We screened articles based on their abstracts and keywords in their text, reviewed potentially relevant articles, and screened their references to (a) assess whether the article met inclusion criteria and (b) identify additional articles. Chatbots, their use cases, and chatbot design characteristics were extracted from the articles and information from other sources and by accessing those chatbots that were publicly accessible.
resultsOur search returned 3334 articles, 61 articles met our inclusion criteria, and 61 chatbots deployed in 30 countries were identified. We categorized chatbots based on their public health response use case(s) and design. Six categories of public health response use cases emerged comprising 15 distinct use cases: risk assessment, information dissemination, surveillance, post-Covid eligibility screening, distributed coordination, and vaccine scheduler. Design-wise, chatbots were relatively simple, implemented using decision-tree structures and predetermined response options, and focused on a narrow set of simple tasks, presumably due to need for quick deployment.
conclusionChatbots' scalability, wide accessibility, ease of use, and fast information dissemination provide complementary functionality that augments public health workers in public health response activities, addressing capacity constraints, social distancing requirements, and misinformation. Additional use cases, more sophisticated chatbot designs, and opportunities for synergies in chatbot development should be explored.
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Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.