Althea

Inspiration/Innovation

Althea was inspired by the need to address the systemic biases in women’s reproductive healthcare. Historically, women’s health has been overlooked, misdiagnosed, and often misunderstood, leading to delayed treatments and unnecessary suffering. We saw a need for a platform that allows women to choose healthcare professionals based on their gender preference and specialization in women’s health. We hope to leverage technology to mitigate these biases by providing a safe, supportive, and bias-free space where individuals can access personalized healthcare services. By using AI, Althea Search filters and compiles articles created by women or with women as collaborators. These answers are designed to provide women with easy-to-read, helpful resources, ensuring they receive relevant and accurate information. Althea is a website with three main features. The ability to speak to an AI that will give a response inspired primarily by female researchers, access to professional help, and anonymity and security. When using the AI, users also have the option to release their chats to the public. By allowing users to make all or part of their conversation available, we provide valuable support to those who may not have access to paid healthcare services. The “Browse Public Chats” section allows users to search through a database of public chats, helping them find advice and support from others who have had similar experiences. By using a custom AI that was customized by us, we were able to have an AI that makes sure to always respond to medical-related issues and ignore other irrelevant things.

Vision

Althea creates a space where everyone’s health needs are addressed without bias, working towards creating a more equitable system where women feel supported. We hope to use this website to encourage all types of diverse cultural medical techniques and enforce well-written information that is true and positive. We hope to make women feel safe by talking to professionals and AI bots completely anonymously. This feeling of safety will allow women to learn more about themselves and beat the stigma of their reproductive health.

Challenges faced

We struggled greatly with incorporating the website and the AI together. With a weaker coding background in our group, we relied on using ChatGPT and our analytical skills to develop our code. With strenuous work, we were finally able to use HTML to embed the chatbot into the website. We also struggled with designing the website ourselves. We all had limited knowledge of website design, but our team split into pieces and we were able to figure out a way to all work at the same time on different things to finally develop a working prototype.

What you got done

We were able to incorporate Althea, a custom chatbot into our website. We also made a working prototype for the website and a period tracking app. Our website incorporates many of the elements that we originally intended to include in the future. We have a list of professionals who have joined to help the site, an AI bot that functions, and our reasons why we are doing everything.

Future directions

In the future, we hope to increase the variety of resources available to users and include a broader range of healthcare professionals, including those specializing in alternative medicines like Traditional Chinese Medicine. We hope to use AI to help flag biased medical advice online and offer users fact-checked resources, improving the accuracy of health information and providing a trusted space for women to navigate their reproductive health. We hope to introduce female health apps, such as a menstrual cycle tracker that is designed by women, and other health apps, specifically designed by women, for women.

AI usage

We used AI to generate the code for custom ChatGPT into our website, the banners on our website, and the privacy policy within our website. Instructions to insert the AI into our website were also created by AI. The use of AI assistance was also used to create the prototype for the period tracking app.