AI is helping to deliver important health information to kidney patients and their families in their own language, and in the comfort of their own home.
Ensuring children with kidney disease and their families clearly understand what genetic testing is, what is involved, and the potential implications of their test results are behind an AI-generated movie featuring a lifelike avatar.
The ground-breaking concept harnesses the power of AI. Associate Professor Cathy Quinlan, an academic paediatric nephrologist at the Royal Children’s Hospital, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the University of Melbourne, is the human behind the avatar that presents key information to patients in a direct and easy-to-understand format. The technology also allows the avatar to deliver information in languages other than English — currently Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, Somali and Vietnamese.
“Making an avatar allows me to narrate, update and add to information, and to have that information translated into another language,” says Associate Professor Quinlan. “It allows me to ‘talk’ to a patient to back up what they are told in clinic.”
When a patient comes to a Renal Genetics clinic, we need to give them quite complex information about genetic testing that isn’t always easy to understand at that time. They then go home and have to explain that information to their family, too says Associate Professor Quinlan.
Her expert kidney knowledge and experience in discussing kidney disease and genetic testing with more than 700 patients ensures the information presented by her avatar is relevant and understandable. The avatar movie is also being used by kidney specialists nationally and internationally as an educational tool.
“A lot of people watching the movie are kidney doctors who need help with how they explain these types of tests to their patients — they want to use language that makes patients feel included and engaged,” says Associate Professor Quinlan. “My intention is for all patient information to be augmented in this way, so patients are proper partners in their own care. I want patients to really understand how their kidneys work, why they might need a certain medication and what therapies they will need next. This kind of AI technology makes it easy to deliver this kind of information.
We shouldn’t be scared by AI. It can help improve outcomes for patients and families and can be a tool to improve everybody’s healthcare experience. It can also help make us better clinicians and researchers.