If you’re a black male who has sex with other males, you have a 1 in 2 chance of contracting HIV over your lifetime, according to 2016 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you’re a hispanic man, your chances are 1 in 4.

Healthcare technology company Healthvana wants to change these data points, and they’re using artificial intelligence and the flair of a drag queen to make their goal a reality.

The company is working closely with the Biden-Harris Administration’s HIV task force as part of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which aims to eliminate HIV in America by 2030 by reducing the number of new diagnoses by more than 90% and helping people who are living with HIV reach a level of viral suppression where the disease is undetectable and untransmittable.

The CDC estimates 65% of men who have HIV have received some HIV care. The reasons why the other 35% of men with a positive status hadn’t received care vary and are further complicated by racial and socio-economic barriers to care, Bastani explained.

To fix those barriers, Healthvana founder Ramin Bastani looked to the communication technology already widely used in smartphones. An estimated 97% of Americans own a smartphone, according to data from ConsumerAffairs.

The Healthvana app gives patients a user experience that’s closer to how we use our phones to communicate with each other through social media, dating apps and messaging. It’s officially called a “patient engagement platform,” but Batsani also described it as “a patient portal that doesn’t suck.”

What Healthvana is, he explained, is an AI-chatbot style smartphone app where patients can view test results, ask questions, request appointments and receive accurate answers for basic healthcare questions–all without the need for a clinic worker to log in and respond to individual messages.

The app lets you choose the AI chat experience you want, including a bot whose language and word choices mimic a drag queen, Bastani said. You can view the different AI experiences on the app’s website.

Bastani said offering the drag queen option for the AI experience was done with the goal of making sexual healthcare more approachable and less stigmatizing.

“Collaboratively came up with some of these different personas and we started with a couple of because it’s it really is like, Hey, do you want to standard persona that AI just can answer a lot of your questions, or do you want to go to the staff, and then there was also one, it’s a little more fun, hopefully be a little less stigmatizing,” said Bastani.

Here’s why Bastani said he created a smartphone app for sexual health clinics to deliver test results and respond to patient concerns.

The clinic challenges

Having a service that can answer basic questions and manage scheduling–basically an AI secretary–gets patients the care they need faster.

It also frees up clinic employees to focus on other things besides time-consuming administrative tasks that, while necessary, are often a barrier to efficient care.

Patients also often have questions when they first start taking the HIV prevention drug PrEP or their HIV treatment. The AI chatbot in Healthvana can answer basic questions for patients and also provides them regular reminders to take their medication and schedule follow-up appointments.

Healthvana can also deliver HIV and other STI test results through the app–reducing the need for a clinic worker to call about every result.

“Instead of waiting a couple of days for the staff to respond, or trying to call the staff or trying to walk in. Hopefully the AI can address a lot of the more common questions in order to help educate and navigate the patient towards health,” Bastani said.

He said some sexual healthcare providers were hesitant to provide STI results via a message on an app instead of through a phone call–like most clinics have typically delivered results in the past.

The data suggests the opposite.

According to Healthvana’s data, patients were delivered test results two days sooner, and received treatment two days sooner than before they started using the service. The results were published by the American Public Health Association in 2017.

Bastani said the app is fully HIPAA-compliant and keeps patient information safe.

The cultural and socio-economic challenges in HIV treatment

As the son of immigrants, Bastani said these barriers, especially in the form of language barriers, have been an ever-present part of his life. His experience helping his parents manage their healthcare in America was part of his motivation to make healthcare more accessible.

The Healthvana app can understand more than 80 languages and automatically detects the language being spoken and changes the languages the chatbot uses in its responses.

Some people who are diagnosed with HIV battle constant cultural fears surrounding the disease that have persisted despite efforts to eliminate stigma. This stigma has a real impact on how consistently patients take their medications, especially young people who are HIV positive, according to a 2012 study published in the AIDS Patient Care journal.

“We’ve had patients tell us they hide their medication bottles out of fear their family may find out they are taking HIV treatment or prevention medication,”

The chatbot is designed to respond with accurate information that reassures the patient that their condition is likely curable and treatment is available, Bastani explained.

What solutions exist, and how AI can improve what we have

Aside from the barriers to accessing treatment, keeping patients in treatment is another key aspect of ending HIV transmission. If patients reach “undetectable” levels of HIV, they must still continue treatment.

The Healthvana app is designed to send patients reminders to take their medication throughout their treatment.

Bastani said he thinks it’s important to recognize that removing the human aspect of delivering test results and honest answers to questions makes patients less likely to feel like they are being judged for their diagnosis.

Real stories from people living with HIV

About 1.2 million Americans are living with HIV, according to data from HIV.gov.

The most important message Healthvana wants to spread about HIV is that treatment is available.

“HIV is no longer a death sentence,” Bastani said.

If you’re looking for real perspectives from people living with HIV, please read these Reckon pieces: