Teens create chatbot to help people understand health care costs
By Quanecia Fraser
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OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — A new artificial intelligence chatbot created by a group of teenagers aims to make it easier to understand the American health care system.
Beginning their senior year of high school at Millard North, Pavan Athota, Anthony Le, and Wesley Chen have had anything but a normal summer. They spent part of it in Brazil, presenting a project, months in the making.
“This project’s our baby,” Athota said.
“Technology is taking over, and AI is becoming a big thing, so we decided to use AI as a tool,” Le said.
That tool is called MedFinanceAI, a conversational chatbot to help people understand medical costs and how to navigate the health care system.
“One of the things about our chatbot that’s different from Google or Chat GPT is we gather information from local hospitals, local medical databases,” Chen said.
Target audiences are younger people or those from immigrant backgrounds who may not have the best understanding of the American healthcare system.
“Healthcare in the US is a big culture shock. All our parents are first-gen immigrants, so they know firsthand how difficult it was to get accustomed,” Athota said.
Part of what inspired the project was 17-year-old Chen’s experience going to the ER. His parents were surprised to see they had a $600 bill, even with insurance.
“And I started thinking about how people who don’t know about medical finances and don’t have insurance coverage, how they’d be able to handle an emergency when they needed to,” Chen said.
The chatbot functions in both English and Spanish, but the boys hope to expand it in other languages.
“Right now, we’re just focused on Nebraska because we’ve only uploaded the files and information from Omaha, but we’re trying to get it more accessible in other states as well,” Athota said.
The boys see it as a positive that can come from the ever-emerging field of artificial intelligence.
“The connotation of AI right now is sometimes negative at school… but I think the tool can definitely have some positive impacts, and it can really create some useful things,” Athota said.
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