Unlocking Conversations: Highlights from the IDI Team Crowdsourcing Interactive Workshop

Innovation in data collection methods is crucial for shaping the future of technology, especially in domains as sensitive and vital as sexual health. From June 12th to 14th, 2023, the HASH Team hosted an engaging Interactive Workshop, themed “Let’s Talk About Sex.” This event, held alongside the AfricAI conference, aimed to harness collective intelligence to address the critical data challenges that exist within the AI for health eco-system in Africa. There is a shortage of quality, useable datasets and majority of datasets have not been contextualized for the African setting. To solve this, HASH used an interactive approach to crowdsource a question-and-answer dataset for developing AI-enabled sexual health information tools. An immediate use case for this dataset is three HASH subgrantee teams that are building chatbots to convey information on Sexually Transmitted Infections.

This crowdsourcing approach is especially of value in the sexual health field because in every context, sexual health dialogue is characterized by jargon that varies across societal settings, geographical location and age. Therefore, researchers, developers and health workers would be biased if they developed the question-and-answer pairs themselves. Additionally, because of their own wealth of knowledge, they may not have full awareness of the information needs of possible end users of chatbots. Therefore, we chose a crowdsourcing approach in order to make the dataset as comprehensive as possible. The dataset will not only be rich in diversity but also reflective of the complex societal attitudes and beliefs surrounding sexuality.

What sets this initiative apart is its commitment to openness and collaboration. The dataset will be made freely available to researchers, developers, and organizations interested in building chatbots and other AI-driven solutions for sexual health education and support. By democratizing access to high-quality data, the HASH Team aims to catalyze innovation and empower communities to address sexual health challenges effectively. The open nature of the dataset encourages transparency and collaboration, fostering a collective effort towards meaningful impact.
Stay tuned for updates on the processing and release of the open-source dataset, and join us in shaping the future of sexual health research and technology.

Together, let’s make a difference.