What began as a dream in 2022 has now become a reality. I aimed to make parenting advice and content readily accessible to parents, right where they are. This week, we are excited to launch aiah on WhatsApp.
WHY?
I have stories that you will not believe, like the parent who asked if she can give her 6 week old Energade because she has diarrhoea or the mom who was told by her doctor that her baby was not gaining enough weight and needed to have expressed breastmilk but not how much. These moms over years have relied on reaching out to me on social media for answers, because their medical professional cant be there 24/7 and Dr Google is a mine field to navigate.
Create a clone of me in the form of an on-demand chatbot with reliable content was the goal. Imagine an on-demand assistant that can:
- Help get babies to sleep well
- Advise on excellent nutrition
- Triage health issues and advise when to get attention
- Give stimulation activities
- Be a voice of comfort and support
HOW?
We started the build before Large Language Models were openly available and then accelerated the build using OpenAI’s LLM as a foundation. But because GPTs can hallucinate and be unreliable, we created a closed loop environment with all my knowledge – all books, articles, podcast transcripts and even my Facebook conversations.
We have developed a backend system for controlling the content, uploading new documents and reviewing answers. The questions are anonymised but the rating system (from the user) along with a ‘low document system’, allow me to train the chatbot.
aiah is built using a RAG methodology (for the technical amongst us) and has an inbuilt medical triage system. Our chatbot cannot answer ‘RED’ or medically sensitive questions but will direct parents to a medical doctor or emergency services. An AMBER question indicates that the baby may need attention but the chatbot will answer, for instance if a baby is very late on a milestone, the parent will be advised to talk to a doctor or OT or physio but will also be given activities to improve milestones. A GREEN question is always answered – for example, ‘What milestones can I expect this week.”
The chatbot will ask the baby’s age, prematurity and method feeding if she does not know (in the app she has this information). This ensures age appropriate and more personalised advice.
WHERE?
We released aiah into our app – Parent Sense in November last year and now we are making her more accessible by launching her into WhatsApp. Her number is +44 7797 864585 (please play with aiah and then share). https://wa.me/447797864585
MY DREAM
I want this product in every parent’s hands and this means we need corporate and government to get behind it, because many consumers cannot afford to pay for the service.
Current pricing:
- Free in the Parent Sense app
- £9.99 in WhatsApp
Please reach out with ideas and ways to get this service out there. We are ready to democratise parenting advice.
