Development of Conversational AI Chatbot for Streamlined Access to Drug Utilization Criteria in Thailand’s National Essential Medicines List Category E(2)

Abstract

Category E(2) medicines in Thailand’s National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) refer to drugs required for specific patient cases. These drugs have limited indications, are used under particular conditions, and are often high-cost. Currently, the drug utilization criteria are provided as electronic PDF files, which users must manually search, download, read, potentially leading to delays and misunderstandings. With the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), this study aims to develop a conversational AI chatbot to streamline access to drug utilization criteria in the NLEM Category E(2), and to evaluate the chatbot’s conversational ability based on key elements of User Experience (UX). The study involves transforming drug utilization information into a structured that actionable format, categorized by drug name and usage conditions. The development process involved transforming the drug utilization guidelines into an actionable and structured format, categorized by drug name and usage conditions. A human-like conversation flow was designed. The chatbot was built using Dialogflow and integrated with the LINE Official Account (Line OA). To evaluate the chatbot’s conversational ability, 31 case-based scenarios were designed and created in accordance with the ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-4:2021 standard, covering six dimensions of UX. These scenarios were reviewed and validated by experts prior to their use in the evaluation. The chatbot successfully provided streamlined access to drug utilization criteria for 36 medicines across 68 disease indications. Evaluation results based on the test cases demonstrated an overall conversational performance of 85%. This result demonstrates the potential of AI-powered chatbots to streamline drug information retrieval, particularly regarding specific criteria or protocols essential for Drug Use Evaluation (DUE) in Thailand’s healthcare system.