SingHealth and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), with support from the Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), have co-developed a chatbot known as “Doctor Covid” to improve care for COVID-19 patients at community care facilities.

Hosted on the Telegram mobile application, Doctor Covid boasts a variety of features in the patients’ native languages to facilitate effective communication, active engagement and interaction, and to support the medical and operations teams in close monitoring of their health and well-being.

Doctor Covid has been purposefully developed and used at such facilities managed by SingHealth at Singapore EXPO and D’Resort since May 2020.

It complements the care provided by onsite medical teams to ensure that each resident is able to access the right care anytime they need, from identifying symptoms such as chest pain or shortness of breath early, to supporting their psychosocial well-being by allaying any uncertainties or anxieties they may face during their recovery.

To date, more than 3,000 migrant workers staying at SingHealth-managed community care facilities, have subscribed to the chatbot.

The data collected by Doctor Covid, which is anonymised to ensure data privacy, can also be used to identify trends, risk indicators, clinical outcomes, as well as evidence-based practices as a study into the COVID-19 pandemic and care of migrant workers, as well as to prepare for future infectious disease health emergencies.

Moving forward, data from Doctor Covid may be integrated with other COVID-19 data platforms and registries to form a big data platform with AI analytical tools for operational and research purposes.