Perspectives of parents and healthcare professionals on using chatbots to support parents in child health

Recent advancements in chatbot technology have accelerated the expansion of chatbots to many different areas. In child health, chatbots are thought to be uniquely positioned to support parent education and respond to parents’ doubts. However, the uptake of chatbots remains low in child health, which could be a consequence of the misalignment between users’ perspectives and technology design. There are scant studies investigating parents’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives on using chatbots for child health, and none comparing both perspectives, thus, in this paper we conducted 17 interviews with healthcare professionals working in paediatrics in Portugal and South Africa to explore the strategies they use to support first-time parents’ education. Additionally, we held 8 co-design workshops with 36 first-time and recent parents from the same countries to discuss the concept and design of chatbots. Our findings showed how healthcare professionals see the potential of chatbots in supporting parents’ decision-making processes and improving their health literacy, but never focusing on emergency situations. Parents believed chatbots should provide simple language content, coupled with heuristics to follow autonomously, working in complement to their healthcare professionals. Reflecting on the study findings, we present three key design tensions to improve the effectiveness of chatbots in child health, namely: (i) balancing participant agency with equality regarding child health responsibilities, (ii) structuring or opening access to content, and (iii) considering accessible vs medical language.