A Bi-lingual chatbot implementation for pandemic response using the transformer-based approach
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical need for timely and accurate information in effectively managing pandemics. The proliferation of misinformation on public media platforms complicated the management of the pandemic, necessitating a large and constant human resource to meet the demand for trustworthy information. To address this challenge, we developed an intelligent bilingual chatbot that is available 24/7 to provide medically curated up-to-date and approved pandemic management information in English and Luganda. This approach leveraged deep learning to train a chatbot on a growing corpus of curated pandemic-specific information, questions, and answers. Our results demonstrate an implementation of a chatbot that leverages the well-resourced English NLP framework to enable chatting in the Luganda language. They also show that the chatbot is an effective and flexible tool for disseminating accurate information in real-time, while also providing opportunities for continuous improvement through conversation-driven development.
Source: PLOS Digital Health
Language: English
Topic: Speech and dialogue systems
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,043
Awards: G1340719462, G1358333817, The Infectious Diseases Institute Limited - to harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve the lives of those living in low-and-middle income countries who otherwise lack..., G4857273222, G5514976981, NURTURING GENOMICS AND BIOINFORMATICS RESEARCH CAPACITY IN AFRICA (BRecA)
OpenAlex ID: W7147550940