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Google.org has awarded Clalit Health Services $2 million over two years to develop a voice-driven AI assistant for healthcare in Israel. The plan is to let patients use ordinary landlines or mobile phones to access services in their spoken languages, including people without internet access or smartphones.

What happened The assistant, called Digital Front Door, is being developed and operated by Clalit, with Google Cloud hosting the service and Google Gemini and other large language models providing its conversational AI, according to AI News. The reported uses include helping patients prepare for appointments, complete intake and triage, book appointments and manage follow-up care. The project is due to begin with a pilot before a planned nationwide deployment. Clalit also says it intends to publish the system’s voice-AI architecture and cultural adaptation frameworks as open source, so other public healthcare organisations could adapt the approach. Why it matters

Discuss: Should healthcare AI be judged first on how many people it can reach, or on how reliably it handles each interaction?

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