Anna Zamora-Kapoor, PhD, a sociology professor and researcher in the WSU College of Medicine’s Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health (IREACH), has concluded after a nine-month study that rural health clinics are not ready for artificial intelligence implementation. Her work is featured in a new article from The Spokesman-Review.
Zamora-Kapoor partnered with Three Rivers Hospital in Brewster, Washington to identify whether using AI-generated text messages and text-based intervention would help schedule and follow up with patients who have an increased risk of lung cancer. Zamora-Kapoor said she and her team encountered multiple barriers throughout the study.
“More than 50% of the messages that we sent bounced back from the patients, showing that the clinic doesn’t have a way of contacting their patients,” Zamora-Kapoor said in the article. “This is concerning in the case of if they need to coordinate an evacuation or something serious where they need to reach out to people quickly.”
Zamora-Kapoor said lack of updated phone numbers, limited access to the internet and smartphones, as well as the advanced age of many of the patients in the study were the highest contributing factors to the unsuccessful communications. Despite the outcome, she said the project was an important starting point to focus more resources on outreach in rural communities.