Until the vaccination for COVID-19 is ready, health authorities across the globe are pleading people to practice Social distancing. While we are physically far away from each other, there is one thing that binds us with our loved ones to exchange positivities, information and stay connected and that is technology. Pandemic in many ways is not absolute but it will not be wrong in implying that the times that we are in today have better tools to deal with pandemics that we had 25 years ago. 

We all know it is not going to be easy, but imagine how much tougher it could be if there wasn’t technology in the picture! Mentioning of technology let us just briefly see how a few technologies can help us connect better in such trying times –

• E-commerce: We do not have to go out to get our necessities as they will reach our doorstep because it is too risky to venture out for stock, landing you in trouble.
• Video Chats: Video chats have been a revolutionary tool to contact people beyond geographical borders in real-time. 
• Social Media platforms: Strong social media platform orientation can go a long way to keep the momentum going.
• Health-care technology: This is extremely important because COVID-19 currently has burdened the healthcare industry but new-age technologies are better equipped to not just study the impact of the virus but also in ensuring the speeding up of studies to discover a vaccine. 

Any list of technologies without the mention of chatbot technology will be incomplete as this emerging tech is helping the world go through this pandemic too. Thousands of chatbots have been constructed to share information and also seek information regarding the pandemic. 

Hospitals public health authorities and digital health companies have rapidly deployed online symptom checking tools that would screen patients for even the slightest signs of COVID-19. The idea behind it is pretty simple and that is the use of chatbots powered by Artificial intelligence can ensure anxiously waiting patients do not enter and roam around freely in emergency rooms and also can receive health advice from far off.

The lack of awareness about COVID-19 and the glaring challenges

While we can comfortably imply that technology has spread its wings so wide that it provides some great tools to fight with in dealing with this pandemic. But, many amongst us, also are using technology for the wrong purposes especially in the spread of fake news and information about COVID-19 increasing the scare.

The lack of awareness among people is what has led Italy, Germany, Spain to the doorsteps of a disaster. When measures and lockdowns were announced as a mode of social distancing people did not pay heed and ended up being infected. This was only because people took the messages very lightly and were not aware enough of the repercussions. 

Ironically the biggest challenge that surrounds government and the whole situation is to disseminate information to the people in the information age! Other apparent challenges are:

1. In nations where network connectivity is still a large issue at hand, such an outbreak of the pandemic can be detrimental. Novel Coronavirus has been named so as the virus and its nature of spread is new. Every day a new set of information is discovered and bringing that to people can be a challenge if the internet connectivity is poor. 

2. Lack of authentic sources of information on COVID-19 which is resulting in confusion among people.

3. Lack of human resources to address the doubts and queries of people concerning COVID-19 precautions and symptoms.

How ICT helping to fight this challenge

The ICT community has already begun taking the necessary steps by infusing tools for digital change. Among the digital technology chatbots, robots, telemedicine, and big data are deployed in order to garner necessary information, make an effective diagnosis and also prepare future vaccines. Many countries have already deployed autonomous vehicles to supply medicines to people, they are also powering their drones with thermal imaging cameras for virus detection and also lending their supercomputer powers to develop a vaccine. 

Also read: How AI and Data Science can Help to Fight Corona Pandemic

Path-breaking work done by the ICT community

• In the Kaifu district of the Hunan province, robots measure body temperature, record relevant data and also disinfect the hands of the employees. The USA also did not lag behind in the deployment of digital solutions as the first person diagnosed was by a robot doubly confirmed by a human. 
• Seattle-based Start-up 98point6 has started offering virtual tours with its application where patience is chatting with a bot before being transferred to a doctor. 
• France’s Doctolib specializing in making medical appointments provides free teleconsultation for the entire doctor community. 
• Digital technology plays a prominent role in anticipating the disease also known as digital epidemiology. This stream consists of gathering, evaluating and sorting huge amounts of data on the internet.
• The University of North California research lab has even gone further by creating a synthetic copy of the virus. They have been using computer readings of the gene sequence that has been put online. Creating such a virus will empower tolls to study vaccines and treatments.

These and many others, the sphere is rapidly expanding and Information and Communication groups are under tremendous pressure to deliver digital solutions.

Why chatbots are effective tools during these tough times

You might be seeing several COVID-19 messenger bots in action during this time. With so many inundating the market, it will be useful to see why these tools are effective in these times. 

• All the information is in one place. In such a critical situation, things do not take time to change. But if the information is shared via a bot, making information edits and updating it is very easy. On messenger bots, it takes a few seconds to change and update information. 
• Overcrowding of health organizations can be stopped. Hospitals and health organizations are bombarded with walk-ins, calls and even emails. During these times, bots surely are the best way out as they save time and walk-ins by answering basic questions and share routine information that other people call up and take. 
• Messenger bots are simple and easy to use. The messenger interface is not something that you are not aware of. Bots interact in back-and-forth style which is more stress-free and useful in times of crisis. 
• They are easy to build and get built. We have designed several chatbot platforms and bots for our users. In light of such a crisis, we will keep helping people by providing custom chatbots or chatbot creation platforms. 

How and from where you can get this custom based AI chatbots

AI-based chatbots are the need of the present times. They have been adopted by several health care organizations to rest the fears, answer queries and tracking symptoms and in a small span of time chatbots have been able to reach out to millions of customers in addressing issues related to the pandemic. 

To get custom-based AI chatbots there are two ways, you can either resort to creating one yourself on many chatbot platforms available free of cost. As a top software development company and an organization that believes in optimizing the use of emerging technologies, our recommendation stands on getting a chatbot built by professionals. We strongly recommend you to leave it to the professionals for creating bots of such serious nature that will need to handle immense load traffic and have to function well even in these times. There are other benefits too like:

• Your regular bot made on the public platform might need a little more vigilance as it might also return wrong answers. With professional Chatbot developers, one can improve the accuracy of your bot with middleware that will simplify all customer queries.
• If you’ve been self-managing your bot for a while, you’ll realize that it fails because people speak in a way that’s difficult for bots to train for. Custom software development companies like ours use Natural Language solution deals with the way people speak reaching over a 94% accuracy.
• If you build a bot for COVID-19 query resolution, it will not be easy for search engines to extract relevant keywords from the complex search. But chatbot development companies use the Natural language approach to improve search accuracy by letting the bot entail the customer with only the relevant results. 
• In the case of customer support chatbot, you are aware of how valuable customer data can be. Companies use advanced technologies to extract key data from customer conversations so that action can be taken on time.

We have developed AI-based futuristic Chatbots for many clients to help them address queries in a massive number. These futuristic chatbot creation platforms need no human intervention as they run on machine learning algorithms. In these times, the chatbot platform can be used to make professional bots available with all the tools to ensure you create robust bots for COVID-19 Query addressal. 

How countries and organizations are using AI-based chatbots?

CDC’s chatbot can help you self-check for symptoms:

CDC launched an automated chatbot to help Americans self-check for the virus. The self-checker bot provides information on self-check apart from fact sheets about community mitigations, symptoms and recommended course of action based on gender, age, and symptoms. It does not provide a sure-shot diagnosis or treatment but it does make a swift evaluation based on symptoms and also assesses risk to suggest if the user needs to contact the medical provider.

WHO health alert on Whatsapp:

WHO also has launched a messaging solution service in Arabic, French, English, and Spanish. It has partnered with Whatsapp and FB to keep people safe and away from coronavirus. This is an easy-to-use messaging platform that can reach over 2 billion people and also enables people to get information at their fingertips. The messenger bot provides the latest news and information on the virus. It also provides the latest situation report and real-time number estimation of positive cases.

Germany’s Fight Covid messenger bot:

German government held a hackathon in the mid of March for people to create solutions on various COVID-19 related issues. It then started work on its FightCovid Messenger bot which offers a seamless chat experience with a lot of functionalities especially the symptom checker. The chatbots make the user go through a series of questions to understand if the person is infected or not. Based on the quiz the bot then gives suggestions and next steps.

Argentina’s National Health Ministry Bot:

The all-new health ministry bot offers prevention and tips for self-isolation, details on school closures with travel restrictions, internal links to reliable local and international news sources to let people know what is happening in their area.

Go Sky’s AI-based bot built by Taiwan:

Go Sky AI also built a messenger for Taiwanese local residents. It shares a useful load of information and statistics from WHO and other reputable sources plus features of pharmacy search.

India’s reliance on Whatsapp-based chatbot to create awareness:

India has already turned to Whats App to create awareness about the pandemic. It has also urged social media platforms to control the spread of misinformation.

Sajida Foundation’s messenger bot helping Bangladesh avoid the scare:

The SAJIDA foundation based in Bangladesh also took a holistic approach to their COVID-19 information bot. Like the many other bots, it offered prevention tips and symptoms checkers. It also offers health advice and counseling by popular psychologists that people can ask them how to keep calm in these situations. 

Tips for building effective bots for COVID-19

Use a chatbot platform: If you want to use a chatbot platform then there are many options you can get and if you are looking for professional help then contacting chatbot development companies is your best go. By doing so you will be able to work with several tools that will help you do the following:

• Work coherently with Facebook Messenger and comments
• It will recognize variations of keywords
• It will unite the major payment systems
• It supports numerous CMS platforms

It is also important to define your goals and objectives. If you want to create a bot platform only for symptom checker then dedicate it only to that. It is also important for the bot to be conversational and does not sound mechanical. People are presently panicky and they want conversations that will understand them and respond effectively rather than mechanized information. Based on the information upgrade every few days, it is important also to optimize your bot based on that. 

Summing up

In all, we have seen how chatbots have been truly effective for people to satiate their fears and helped them to be proactive. Chapter247 has been proficient in delivering potent and powerful chatbots to different clients. In today’s time when all organizations have united in their purpose, we as a chatbot solutions development company also dedicate all our efforts to ensuring technology can be used to the hilt for appeasing panic and making information more available and decipherable.

Thinking about making a chatbot for COVID-19? Our association and collaboration will do wonders.