Performing Department
College of Veterinary Medicine
Non Technical Summary
The purpose of this project is to develop an interactive voice user interface (VUI) in the form of an Amazon Alexa skill to deliver food safety and public health information. This skill will be used to support not only early career veterinarians and their staff, but also more seasoned clinicians practicing large animal medicine. The skill will serve as: a reference to help alleviate knowledge gaps which may exist on food safety and public health; serve as a reference for information for resources such as local and state veterinary offices, as well as provide real time updates to many import and export requirements that are commonly encountered by those in practice.The "hands-free" nature of a voice user interface will allow for access to information regardless of location or task being undertaken. The format of this reference will particularly benefit those who travel for large animal ambulatory calls and who may lack constant access to more traditional text-based resources based on location, space in trucks, etc. The skill will be distributed through Amazon's developer platform and promoted at local, state, and national conferences, as well as in print, to ensure the appropriate audience is exposed and educated about its existence and benefits of use.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
0%
Developmental
100%
Goals / Objectives
The long-term goals of this project are to provide:1) A comprehensive and accessible food safety, antibiotic stewardship, and public health database for early career and other veterinarians in rural areas to help them address food safety and corresponding public health issues;2) Alleviation of knowledge gaps and accessibility issues; to overcome barriers to mentorship for recent graduates practicing large animal medicine in remote or rural areas; and3) A reference for seasoned practitioners which will be accessible in a hands-free manner, facilitating ease of use in practice.The project will use modern technology, artificial intelligence, and voice-activated smart-speaker devices (Amazon Alexa) to host food safety, anitbiotic stewardship, and public health information in a new and innovative format primarily for access of early career and remote, rural-based large animal veterinarians.
Project Methods
At the beginning of the project, a Content Advisory Panel will be convened to determine the scope of material to be included in the skill. This panel of experts will self-evaluate the success of the content determined necessary for inclusion in a skill for meeting the goals and objectives set forth by the project. This panel will include individuals who practice clinical medicine, developers as well as individuals from the academic and government sectors. The principal investigator will work with the content to determine the framework, pathways, and build required to develop the aspects within the skill to deliver the content, outlined by the Content Advisory Board. The measure of success at this stage of the project will be skill framework and the basic programming for the skill in place. The principal investigator, along with developers at Voiceflow, will continue to build and refine the skill aspects and begin internally testing the skill for deficiencies. The successful measure at this point will be the useable skill which can be downloaded through the Amazon app store onto an Alexa device for pilot testing and use by LMU faculty and students. The skill will next be deployed to other external stakeholders for testing and use. After a set period of time, all users will be asked to participate in a Qualtrics survey to determine the skill's ease of use, likeability, content pros and cons, and other qualitative measures of evaluation. The survey will contain Likert scale questions, demographic questions, and open-ended questions about user experience and product. This data will be used to refine the skill prior to its final deployment. Additionally, the skill will collect background data and internal metrics on all users including information such as how many users, how much time, what information was accessed, and other relevant data which may guide final skill refinement. After this refinement, the skill will be fully deployed and available on the Amazon app store. An additional Qualtrics survey will be made available to all users of the fully deployed, final version of the skill to again survey users about their experience. Same or similar questions will be asked in the followup survey. Statistical analysis in SPSS will be used to identify areas for improvement (pilot phase) and to capture if enhancements were successful (final deployment).