StoryRx: AI-Powered Visual Stories to Support Health Communication and Diagnosis for Non-Communicable and Infectious Diseases

Lynn Hendricks with Simone Titus and Karolien Perold-Bull of Stellenbosch University and Annibale Cois of the South African Medical Research Council, all in South Africa, will use multiple AI applications to develop a culturally sensitive, visual storytelling intervention for patients that supports their communication with healthcare providers and enhances their knowledge and management of their health status and care regimen. With patients and healthcare providers, they will collect high-quality evidence-based data, representative of the African context and related to symptoms, diagnosis, patient experiences, treatment plans, and disease information. This data will be used with a set of AI tools to generate a repository of text stories with associated images and short videos. They will then recruit a cohort of patients with a new diagnosis of a non-communicable or infectious disease and test whether giving them personalized relevant stories in various formats increases their understanding of their diagnosis and treatment plan.