Towards Speech Interfaces for Health Information Access by Semi-literate Users

摘要: Community health programs in many developing countries are very similar: most involve semitrained, semi-educated workers (often female), who provide services their own communities a large hierarchically managed system across the country. In Pakistan, recent evaluations of government's flagship community program have revealed need for improvement workers' knowledge, and recommended frequent refresher training courses. However, these not been possible to implement primarily reasons cost. It is our conjecture that telephone-based adaptive speech interfaces, tailored specific information needs workers, viable alternative current access mechanisms such as handbooks manuals. We will be designing, testing an interface (“HealthLine”) coming year Pakistan. Initial results from discussions with (using video prototypes) indicate interfaces may potentially much more useful than traditional media.