OSWEGO COUNTY – The Oswego County Health Department and the County Department of Community Development, Tourism and Planning have launched a new website feature to answer COVID-19 questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This chat bot, powered by Watson, will make it easy for community members to have their COVID-19 questions answered when the health department’s hotline is not available.
Equipped with artificial intelligence, Watson can answer questions posed in natural language. This new chat feature can be accessed on the COVID-19 information page at health.oswegocounty.com/COVID-19.
Clicking on the small blue box in the lower right-hand corner will open a window with a disclaimer message. By clicking “accept,” a new window opens which shows popular questions the user can click on, or the user can type their own questions in the search box.
IBM is providing this system at no charge to counties in New York State for a period of time to help with the response to coronavirus and free up personnel for other COVID-19 tasks.
“Watson is not intended to answer 100 percent of questions, but rather provide quick answers to the community,” said Diane Oldenburg, senior public health educator for the Oswego County Health Department. “The computer system was initially developed by IBM to answer questions on the quiz show ‘Jeopardy!’ and in 2011, the Watson computer system defeated champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.”
Staff from the County Health Department and Public Information Office worked with IBM to integrate the feature on the health department’s website.
“We are constantly feeding the bot new data,” said Lisa Gray, tourism and public information liaison for the County Department of Community Development, Tourism and Planning. “There is an artificial intelligence factor at work behind the scenes so the answers will improve over time.”
The Oswego County Health Department’s COVID-19 hotline is staffed 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. It also provides an after-hours option for obtaining COVID-19 information. To call the health department hotline, phone 315-349-3330.
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