Bayer, the pharmaceutical company that owns big name brands such as Aspirin, Aleve, Midol, Cenesten and Iberogast, recently partnered with Ada Health, an AI-based assessment platform. This free app uses an AI chat robot to collect information on symptoms, patient history and other user targeted questions to generate data-driven suggestions for next steps and proper care.

“Ada’s technology is based on a custom-built reasoning engine and a highly comprehensive medical knowledge base, covering thousands of conditions. In fact, in a recent vignettes study testing the eight most popular online symptom assessment apps, Ada was proven to have the most comprehensive condition coverage, providing a condition suggestion 99% of the time, with high medical accuracy and safety of advice,” Vanessa Lemarié, Ada Health’s Chief Client Officer told MobiHealthNews.

Innovations such as these are especially important during current times. Patients are able to gain professional insight without leaving the safety of their homes, mitigating the risk of exposure to COVID-19 and freeing up space in doctors’ offices and hospitals.

The Computing Community Consortium held a workshop, NAE/CCC Workshop on the Role of Robotics in Infectious Disease Crises, in July 2020 to explore research directions and potential benefits of robotics in pandemic times. Similarly to Ada Health, one suggested outcome from the workshop was incorporating robots into the triage process, decreasing contact with potentially infected individuals and saving time for healthcare professionals. You can read about other suggestions in the workshop report.

Ada Health is free, accessible 24/7 and is available for direct download in the US, UK and Germany. You can test it out now on the Aspirin, Aleve, Midol, Canesten and Iberogast websites.