Partner organizations: Indlela@HE2RO, Audere and Shout-it-Now
Study objectives:
- Conduct a contextual enquiry to understand how young people build trust, and the barriers and motivators to using an AI companion for lifestyle and sexual health counseling and pathways to care
- Evaluate the usability of an exemplar product leveraging the Self-Care from Anywhere components for providing health, HIV, and sex-related information and counselling among adolescents and young people in South Africa
Intervention description: Audere has developed a multimodal AI integration toolkit, named “Self-Care from Anywhere”, that can augment any app or service seeking to offer personalised, tailored self-care pathways. The toolkit includes an AI-powered (using language models) counsellor to empathetically answer questions about life, relationships, sex, and health; computer vision services for self-testing guidance and result interpretation; and anonymised connections to clinicians for prevention and treatment options.An exemplar product that leverages WhatsApp to drive self-care client interactions and a clinical portal, which leverages multiple forms of AI for prioritisation and decision support, and is used to oversee and support self-care clients were developed. To evaluate feasibility, usability, acceptability, and to create learnings that guide future investments, the AI toolkit, the WhatsApp experience, and Clinical Portal will be piloted in South Africa with Shout-it-Now.Indlela’s usability study will inform AI toolkit and product design, future product roadmap, and inform readiness for the pilot in South Africa
.Evaluation description: The study is being conducted in two phases.
Phase 1: (completed): Qualitative focus group discussions and in-depth interviews to understand trust building and information seeking behaviours, identify barriers and motivators for use of the exemplar product with a sample of adolescents and young people enrolled in the Indlela Behavioural Hub (B-Hub).
Phase 2: (In progress): Results from the qualitative investigation informed a usability evaluation of the exemplar product and user journey with both young people and healthcare providers.
Study site:
Phase 1: Participants enrolled in the Indlela B-Hub in Johannesburg
Phase 2: Participants were recruited from the Shout-It-Now sites in Gauteng and a sub-set of healthcare providers will be enrolled from Indlela’s B-Hub
Target population: Inclusion criteria for Phase 1:
- Adults ≥ 18 years
- Willing to provide written informed consent
- Comfortable consenting and talking in English or any of the approved study languages
Exclusion criteria for Phase 1:
- Participants who are not willing or available to take part in this sub-study
- Participants who refuse to be audio-recorded
Inclusion and exclusion criteria for Phase 2:
Inclusion criteria for clients:
- Females
- 16-24 years and above
- Able and willing to provide written informed consent
- Willing to self report their HIV status at enrolment
- Comfortable consenting and talking in a study approved language
Exclusion criteria for clients:
- Individuals who do not provide consent to take part in the study
- Individuals who refuse for the FGDs to be audio-recorded
- For individuals invited to participate in a simulated HIVST, those who self report as HIV positive will be excluded
Inclusion criteria for healthcare providers:
- Adults, ≥18 years old
- Comfortable consenting and talking in a study approved language
- Providers which includes any cadre of staff who provide HIV prevention and treatment services
Exclusion criteria for healthcare providers:
- Individuals who do not provide consent
- Individuals who refuse for the qualitative sessions (IDIs or FGDs) to be audio-recorded
Sample size: Phase 1: The study enrolled 39 participants, 19 adolescent girls and young women to participate in 2 separate focus group discussions and up to 20 adolescent boys and young men to participate in in-depth interviews.Phase 2: The usability enrolled 90 young women, 18-24 years and 39 healthcare providers
Duration: 12 months
