Developing a Chatbot to Promote HIV Testing

Yale University

Status: Begins enrollment in 5 months

Conditions: HIV Infections

Treatments: Behavioral: Attention-matched educational materials; Behavioral: Chatbot messages

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT04910984

1R21AI152927-01A1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

2000027864

Details and patient eligibility

About

In this study, the feasibility of a Chatbot in promoting HIV testing in a pilot RCT with 80 men who have sex with men in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia will be studied. Participants will be randomized to Chatbot or treatment as usual (TAU) groups. Participants in the intervention group will receive automated personalized messages containing HIV testing-related information, motivation and skills.

Full description

After informed consent, participants will be randomly assigned to Chatbot or TAU groups using stratified randomization by age. Participants in TAU will receive attention-matched educational materials manually sent by the research assistant. Participants in the intervention group will receive an automated personalized question message (root-node message) from the Chabot. In each round of the interactive communication, the Chatbot will provide automated personalized messages containing HIV testing-related information, motivation and skills based on participants' answers and will continuously update over time. Participants will be observed over 180 days with responses and interactions stored on a HIPAA-compliant and protected cloud. An independent assessment of recent testing and reasons why will be sent by link to both TAU and intervention groups using a link to a Qualtrics survey housed on REDCap at baseline and after 90 and 180 days. After 180 days, the RA will send an additional REDCap survey to intervention participants to assess the feasibility of the Chabot to measure 4 key elements: acceptability, practicality, demand, and adaptation.

Enrollment: 80 estimated patients

Sex: Male

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• cis-gender male
• 18+ years;
• had condomless sex with men in the past 6 months
• has a smartphone
• speaks Bahasa Malay or English.

Exclusion criteria

• Not able to read Malay or English

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

80 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

Chatbot group

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Chatbot messages

TAU group

Placebo Comparator group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Attention-matched educational materials