SBIR Phase I: HealthText: A Digital Decision Support Tool for Medicaid Patients

The broader impact / commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to provide underserved Medicaid patients with accurate and culturally relevant medical advice outside of a standard healthcare setting. This population often lacks access to timely medical advice and this contributes to further health inequalities and unnecessary rising Medicaid costs. Medicaid patients may be less likely to engage with medical personnel face-to-face for fear of exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses. The proposed mobile text-based solution will provide cost-free and culturally relevant health advice. Proper and timely engagement will result in better outcomes for patients and potentially reduce unnecessary trips to the emergency room for routine care. Currently, there is no firmly established text-based health solution for Medicaid patients. This service will be a key factor in enabling the organization’s objective to increase health literacy in underserved populations. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a culturally-appropriate, text-based, digital platform designed exclusively for Medicaid beneficiaries and underserved populations who have largely been omitted from digital health innovation. This project’s research objective is to examine the receptiveness of the underserved population to this method of health information delivery and healthcare navigation support. This study will explore patient engagement with a healthcare navigator using text messaging. The data will be analyzed for speech and content patterns needed to create an easily accessible artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed specifically for Medicaid and other patients from underserved communities. The data generated from this project will also be useful for researchers to refine methods to recruit underserved, black and Hispanic communities for clinical trials and public health research studies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.