Designing Artificial Intelligence-Powered Health Care Assistants to Reach Vulnerable Populations: A Discrete Choice Experiment Among South African University Students

Objective

To understand what preferences are important to university students in South Africa when engaging with a hypothetical artificial intelligence-powered health care assistant (AIPHA) to access health information using a discrete choice experiment.

Patients and Methods

We conducted an unlabeled, forced choice discrete choice experiment among adult South African university students through Prolific, an online research platform, from June 26, 2024 to August 31, 2024. Each choice option described a hypothetical AIPHA using 8 attribute characteristics (cost, confidentiality, security, health care topics, language, persona, access, and services). Participants were presented with 10 choice sets each comprised of 2 choice options and asked to choose between the 2. A conditional logit model was used.

Results

Three hundred participants were recruited and enrolled. Most participants were Black, born in South Africa, heterosexual, working for a wage, and had a mean age of 26.5 years (SD, 6.0). Language, security, and receiving personally tailored advice were the most important attributes for AIPHA. Participants strongly preferred the ability to communicate with the AIPHA in any South African language of their choosing instead of only English and receive information about health topics specific to their context including information on clinics geographically near them. The results were consistent when stratified by sex and socioeconomic status.

Conclusion

Participants had strong preferences for security and language, which is in line with previous studies where successful uptake and implementation of such health interventions clearly addressed these concerns. These results build the evidence base for how we might engage young adults in health care through technology effectively.