LLM-Powered Chatbot to Support the Informational Needs of Community Health Workers

India’s public health system, which delivers last-mile services to over 900 million people, faces a persistent “data-to-action” gap that limits timely and effective responses to community health needs. A key contributor to this gap is the strain on frontline health workers and the constraints of existing support mechanisms. Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) form the backbone of community health delivery, yet they receive only limited initial training and have few opportunities for ongoing upskilling. The reference materials available to them are often insufficient for addressing complex, context-specific, or sensitive questions that arise during fieldwork. Although ASHAs attend periodic group training and meetings, these sessions frequently lack adequate time to address individual queries comprehensively. As a result, many questions remain unanswered and misunderstandings persist. ASHAs rely heavily on Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) for guidance, but a single ANM typically supervises ASHAs across multiple villages, making coordination through phone calls or in-person visits difficult. ANMs themselves may not always have immediate answers and are often overburdened, further delaying resolution. These delays affect the quality of care delivered at the doorstep and can reduce ASHAs’ ability to complete tasks efficiently, with downstream implications for their performance-based incentives. Additionally, ASHA often hesitate to ask rudimentary or sensitive questions due to fear of judgment, limiting open knowledge-seeking and reinforcing gaps in frontline decision-making.

Khushi Baby (KB) is a non-profit organization working as a systems enabler to public health departments in India. Established in 2016, KB’s team of 130 members include expertise from public health, product design, engineering, field implementation, and data science. Co-created with 250,000 hours of community health workers engagement, KB’s solutions have been used to track the health of over 50M beneficiaries across Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. Through enabling high quality data, timely insights, and effective actions, KB aims to close the loop for the public health system at the last mile.