[English].

At Startup Weekend Amman, engineer Mahmoud Darawsheh discusses his team's idea for Dr. Bot, a mobile and tablet application that helps those without direct access to hospitals receive automated diagnosis. 

The team's goal is to build an application that answers patients' questions about their symptoms using an algorithm that leverages Expert System to determine the semantic information in user's written chats and speech. Where Dr. Bot fails to provide an accurate diagnosis, it will connect the patient to a doctor and further reveal a map of the nearest doctors. It is currently designed for Android and Windows 8, and the team plans to iOS apps in the future. 

When it comes to the doctors they hope to involve, "We are targeting freshly graduated doctors who have a passion to prove themselves, who believe in technology and medicine," says Darawsheh.  

He plans to handle quality control by making adjustments based on user feedback, continually assessing how users are talking about the application, and by offering direct assistance from a quality assurance department. Darawsheh also says they plan to monetize the app by charging for premium services.

When it comes to implementing the app, Dr. Bot's creators will have to be careful. To protect themselves from lawsuits, and to maximize accuracy, it would be wise to add disclaimers urging patients to speak directly to a doctor before treating a diagnosis as final. 

Another crucial barrier to getting Dr. Bot off the ground would be building it in Arabic. Although it may have to forgo speech recognition abilities, an Arabic version would reach a larger percentage of Jordan's population and likely make it more useful to its target demographic.

[Apologies for some mistakes with the microphone in this video.]