How AI Makes Telehealth for STIs Smarter and More Accessible
In a recent WHO report, Director-General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus raised concerns about the global STI epidemic saying, “HIV, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) continue to pose a major global health challenge.” The same report also mentioned that these diseases cause 2.5 million deaths each year. Moreover, 1 million people get infected every day, the majority of them with STIs.
STIs are not just a third-world problem, developed nations like the US suffer from this crisis too. In fact, despite its advanced healthcare system, the US faces an alarming STI epidemic. Per CDC’s 2022 surveillance report, STI cases show no respite, with more than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea in the US yet again in 2022.
The situation is escalating every year as the Director of the CDC Division of STD Prevention said in one of their recent letters, “The significant increase in STIs over the past eight years threatens the health of millions of Americans.”
However, we have a new weapon against the war with STIs: AI-powered Telehealth. If implemented properly, it has the potential to revolutionize STI care with a more accessible, efficient, and equitable solution to this pressing public health crisis.
AI-Powered Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention of STIs
The pandemic brought telehealth to the forefront of healthcare and established a new normal. Although it dipped a little as the pandemic retreated, telehealth usage has remained much higher at 14-17% compared to the 1% before the pandemic. However, it is still in transition, with its adoption influenced (and sometimes hindered) by various factors, including demographics, geographical locations, insurance availability, and access to technology.
While telehealth holds immense potential to manage STIs, these irregularities must be addressed to ensure equitable access and positive health outcomes. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. Its integration with telehealth technology can usher in a new era in STI care with its analytical capabilities, making our approach to sexual health smarter, more accessible, and more effective.
AI can analyze patient data and employ image processing to assess physical symptoms for STI screening, triage, and diagnosis, enhancing accuracy and ensuring inclusivity. For instance, researchers found that a web-based risk prediction tool called MySTIRisk developed using AI accurately identifies people at high risk of contracting HIV and other STIs. The risk scores provided by this tool effectively determine high-risk subgroups for these infections and help with targeted STI screening and prevention.
Moreover, telehealth technology has enabled people to order FDA-approved at-home diagnostic kits for several medical conditions, including STIs like gonorrhea, chlamydia, etc. whose testing rates are quite low. While AI may not provide door-to-door diagnostic services yet, it can analyze physical symptoms images and lab results for preliminary assessments more accurately and quickly than humans, reducing turnaround times and administrative burdens.
Furthermore, AI can help medical professionals tailor patient-centered STI treatment plans by analyzing patient data like medical history, lifestyle, and genetic disposition, allowing them to prescribe more effective treatment. In addition, AI-powered apps or messaging can remind patients to take medicines on time, track health progression, and flag health deterioration for timely interventions.
Another area related to STIs where AI can shine is the prevention and early detection of STIs in a large number of populations. It can analyze infection patterns and large datasets quickly using ML algorithms, which can help in identifying high-risk communities and geographical areas as well as predicting epidemic possibilities. This information can be further used to develop proactive targeted public health interventions on a large scale to stop the spread of STIs and prevent a considerable surge in cases.
AI has also shown promise in accelerating STI vaccine development. By analyzing vast datasets and predicting molecular interactions, AI can help researchers optimize vaccine formulations. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School used an AI model called EDEN (Efficacy Discriminative Educated Network) to identify two promising antigens as candidates for a gonorrhea vaccine, which were successfully tested on mice.
Improving Equitable STI Care Access through AI-Based Telehealth
Along with better diagnostics, treatment, and prevention, AI can promote an integrated approach to improve the overall sexual health of society with enhanced access to STI care, especially for underserved communities like BIPOC and LGBTQ+ who are more vulnerable to STIs as a result of social stigma and cultural disconnect. AI can help these communities get better STI care in several ways. Here are a few of them:
- Convenience and Affordability: With RPM, patients in remote areas or marginalized urban regions can access STI care from anywhere, anytime without expensive traveling and inconvenient in-person visits. They can use low-cost wearables with AI to track their health metrics in real time, alerting them and their providers about health complications.
- Cultural Inclusivity: NLP (Natural Language Processing) models trained in several languages can improve access to care by overcoming language barriers that prevent medical professionals from reaching people who don’t speak English, ensuring more equitable access to care.
- De-stigmatization: AI-powered chatbots can help potential STI patients overcome their fear of societal judgment by supporting anonymous diagnoses and virtual care. AI can also be used to create more engaging and compassionate tools that can provide STI awareness resources virtually to STI patients who dread face-to-face interactions.
Here are some examples of AI initiatives to improve STI care with reduced stigma:
- The AIDS Healthcare Foundation launched an AI-powered chatbot that provides engaging and informative sexual health education in a drag queen style to reach marginalized communities by increasing cultural relevance and inclusivity.
- In another example, HIV.gov introduced an AI chatbot (beta version) that offers confidential information and support about HIV from government-approved sources, reducing stigma and barriers to care as a step toward Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S.
Challenges and Ethical Considerations
As with every technology, AI-driven telehealth faces some challenges in widespread implementation and it must be balanced against related ethical concerns. For instance, AI tools are developed by humans who are likely to transfer their bias to these tools. Training ML algorithms on a vast amount of publicly available data from diverse sources can address this issue and make them more inclusive and culturally sensitive.
Another concern is the privacy and safety of patient information that many platforms violate by selling personal data. It can be addressed by developing more stringent regulations for the use of AI in healthcare through the combined efforts of policymakers and healthcare providers.
We must acknowledge that while AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, it is still in its early stages. Its application requires human-centric design, careful implementation, and oversight from legislative, technical, and healthcare experts.
Embracing AI in the Digital War Against STIs
The integration of AI into telehealth for STIs has immense potential to provide smarter care delivery, enhance access to healthcare, improve patient outcomes, spread sexual health awareness, and reduce associated cultural stigma. AI’s abilities to analyze vast datasets could also accelerate vaccine development and predict STI outbreaks.
However, further research and collective efforts from diverse stakeholders, including lawmakers, medical experts, healthcare organizations, and tech leaders are essential to realize this potential. Consider this as a call for healthcare providers to begin integrating AI in their care delivery, policymakers to build effective AI-usage policies and prioritize funding, technologists to build ethical AI tools, and individuals to advocate for inclusive sexual health care.
The journey has just begun, but with continued investment and development, we can look forward to a future of improved sexual wellness worldwide.
References:
- WHO Report: https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/376814/9789240094925-eng.pdf
- CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/std/statistics/2022/default.htm
- CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/sti/php/from-the-director/2023-06-29-mena-funding.html
- McKinsey Healthcare Insights: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/is-virtual-care-delivering-on-its-promise-of-improving-access
- NIH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38440304/
- Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-at-home-sti-test-could-help-stop-the-spread-of-infection/
- AAFP: https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/20210701sticovid.html
- News-Medical: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20231031/AI-may-help-identify-potential-gonorrhea-vaccine-proteins.aspx
- ASM: https://asm.org/press-releases/2023/october/researchers-use-ai-to-identify-potential-gonorrhea
- NIH: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8861755/
- Everyday Health: https://www.everydayhealth.com/stds/stigma-stds-mental-health-lgbtq-youth-whats-connection/
- StatNews: https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/02/drag-queen-ai-chatbot-aids-healthcare-foundation-education-outreach/
- HIV.gov: https://www.hiv.gov/blog/hivgov-launches-new-chatbot-tool
Image credit: Tippapatt, iStock
Topics: HealthTech
