I Corps: A Psychologically-Informed Contact Tracing Tool

I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一个交互式的在线平台，该平台可以进行患者主导、面试官自由、接触者追踪面试（CTI）。接触者追踪是一项行之有效的公共卫生措施，用于遏制艾滋病毒、埃博拉病毒和COVID等传染病的传播。在目前的情况下，由访谈者主导的接触者追踪成本高、效率低，并导致遗漏潜在的传染性接触者，从而使疾病继续传播。拟议的技术采用了公认的、经过经验验证的认知和社会心理学的心理学方法，这些方法可以增强记忆力，并将其应用于公共卫生。这种将现有心理学方法应用于cti的新方法可能会使面试成功率提高50%。此外，所提议的工具可用于跨越多种传染病，并可迅速符合任何传染病和任何语言的参数。这个I-Corps项目的基础是开发一个数字平台，该平台应用认知心理学技术改进接触者追踪，以遏制传染病的传播。所提出的数字平台将面试官从接触追踪面试中移除，而不会降低效率。自我引导的访谈使患者能够选择访谈的时间、地点和节奏。结果是更少的联系人被遗忘，更快的结果，并节省成本，因为该技术通过技术驱动的分销渠道促进数据收集，而无需雇用、培训和补偿联系人跟踪人员。此外，拟议的平台还使用自然语言处理和人工智能来汇总数据并检测传染病爆发的模式。先前的研究表明，所提出的技术中使用的心理学方法有助于增加受访者可能回忆的信息量，从而有助于更好地为企业和政府机构的决策提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of an interactive, online platform that conducts patient-led, interviewer-free, contact tracing interviews (CTI). Contact tracing is a well-established public health measure used to contain the spread of contagious diseases such as HIV, Ebola, and COVID. In its current state, interviewer-led contact tracing is costly, inefficient, and results in the omission of potentially infectious contacts, allowing the continued spread of disease. The proposed technology takes well-established, empirically validated psychological approaches from cognitive and social psychology that bolster recall and applies them to public health. This new application of existing psychological approaches to CTIs may increase interview yield by 50%. In addition, the proposed tool may be used to span multiple infectious diseases and may quickly conform to the parameters of any infectious disease and any language.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a digital platform that applies cognitive psychological techniques to improve contact tracing to combat the spread of contagious disease. The proposed digital platform removes the interviewer from the contact tracing interview without a loss of efficiency. Self-led interviews empower patients to choose the time, place, and pace of the interview. The result is fewer contacts forgotten, rapid results, and cost savings as the technology facilitates data collection through technologically driven distribution channels without hiring, training, and compensating contact tracers. In addition, the proposed platform also uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to aggregate the data and detect patterns in contagious outbreaks. Prior research reveals that the psychological methods utilized in the proposed technology help increase the amount of information that interviewees may recall, thus helping better inform decision-making by businesses and government entities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.