Experts investigating how AI can help doctors better understand benefits of online menopause chats
Social media and blogs are increasingly used by those in perimenopause and menopause to talk about their experiences
New research will show if a combination of artificial intelligence and advice exchanged online between women could help improve menopause support.
Social media and blogs are increasingly used by those in perimenopause and menopause to talk about their experiences and how they are coping with the changes to their bodies.
Medical professionals can’t easily use this advice, which stops it playing a potentially helpful role in informing their work. Women can be reluctant to talk openly to doctors about all their symptoms.
Now experts are embarking on a new project to see if the insights shared in these online communities can be used to promote health education and well-being.
They will use AI to collect useful data about coping strategies from the original posts on social media and online blogs, protecting people’s privacy.
This will be used to create a new AI model which detects common themes and coping strategies, and could be itself used to produce written advice
The project is funded by and made possible by the Worldwide University Network’s distinctive geographic reach and interdisciplinary expertise and will be carried out by partners from the University of Exeter, Monterrey Institute of Technology, Federal University of Minas Gerais, and Makerere University.
The research is led by a team including Rodrigo Wilkens, Ana Beduschi, Aline Villavicencio, Huma Samin and Karen Knapp from the University of Exeter.
Dr Wilkens said: “Women are using online spaces to open up about their experiences and find support. But doctors can access this potentially useful information people are sharing online. First-person accounts remain largely untapped in research due to the difficulty of fully complying with platform rules and data-protection requirements.
“We hope our research will be very useful for medical professionals. It will help them be aware of common symptoms and the way women are coping with them.
“By linking responsible AI, linguistic diversity, and women’s health, the project will contribute to turning patient voices into safer insights towards better health education
“Our focus is on well-being rather than diagnosis: we will identify emotions, coping strategies and stigma patterns to reveal what supports everyday functioning at home and work. This approach provides new empirical evidence on healthy ageing and gendered well-being.”
Professor Ana Beduschi, who focuses on the data privacy aspects of the research said: “The work will allow messages from online forums to be used to support health research without compromising privacy.
“Capturing how women express concerns and coping strategies can inform health education and communication strategies needed during menopause. The work will support researchers, clinicians, and policymakers in developing transparent, ethical AI for health communication.”
