Automated voice-bot offers a helping hand to authorised personnel

One of the effective measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Hong Kong is the isolation of the close contacts of the ill patients. In many cases, however, this group of close contacts is not a small one; and it can grow by the hour. Medical officials fighting the pandemic are required to monitor the health status of this group on a regular basis, often by phone — a tedious and time-consuming task. Can this monitoring be done more effectively? The team at VoiceAI Tech reflected on this question and decided the answer was: yes indeed!

VoiceAI Tech is a specialist in AI speech technologies such as voiceprint recognition and speech recognition. In order to help alleviate the intense burden of the anti-pandemic on health officials, the company worked to adapt its self-developed voiceprint technology to the situation in Hong Kong, and then released an automated phone calling system that can accurately collect information from people under quarantine, without having the officials even touching a dial pad.

This automated system serves to reduce the repetitive work of having authorised professionals to call people under quarantine via the AI enabled technology. It collects health-related information from the recipient via voiceprint recognition technology, which can confirm or otherwise the identity of the speaker. Then, the information will be stored and further processed with appropriate technologies. From the dialogue, the system receives crucial health-related information, including the speaker's physiological and psychological characteristics, such as their gender, emotional mood, frequency of a cough, etc. This system goes a long way to helping authorised personnel to establish a relevant data base, understand the health status of the people quarantined; otherwise they would spend extra time, making individual calls to scores of people.

What's more, the automated system can even engage in a dialogue with the recipients and therefore record more personal information, such as personal identity, the people they have come into contact with, and if they have left a mandatory place — raising a red flag if anything suspicious is revealed. This way, the authorised medical personnel can make the needed steps to further investigate the case, and to keep the community informed of the issue if needed, raising public awareness in time. The automated system works to improve not only the efficiency but also accuracy of the Government’s official monitoring policy, helping medical professionals and other authorised personnel in the important fight against the spread of the disease.

Company Profile

VoiceAI Technology Co., Ltd, or VoiceAI Tech, was established in 2016, assembling scientists and industry experts from leading Hong Kong, mainland Chinese and foreign universities. The company's self-developed, and industry-leading voiceprint recognition technology is combined with speech recognition and big data analytics to offer solutions across industries and spaces, including public and social security, financial services and many more.