ZAGREB, April 14, 2020 - Croatia on Tuesday unveiled its first digital assistant to advise people how to diagnose and manage suspected COVID-19 infections.
This "virtual doctor", powered by artificial intelligence, has been developed by Croatian IT companies in cooperation with epidemiologists, including doctor Branko Kolaric, who said at the presentation that by developing the new COVID-19 service, Croatia followed the examples of South Korea and Singapore.
The digital assistant is available at https://andrija.ai/ and can be activated on WhatsApp under the name Andrija.
The digital assistant "Andrija" is named after Andrija Štampar, a distinguished Croatian doctor and scholar in the field of social medicine. From 1931 to 1933, Štampar worked as an expert of the Health Organization of the League of Nations. He also spent time in China, from 1933 to 1936, after the Health Organization sent him as an advisor to help the Chinese health administration in the control of mass infectious diseases that appeared after devastating floods in 1931.
Prime Minister Andrej Plenković's chief-of-staff Zvonimir Frka-Petešić said that the online health self-assessment tool was available to all Croatian smart phone users.
Kolarić said that the digital assistant was very helpful to the healthcare system as it could process tens of thousands of requests on a daily basis, while doctors can handle some 50 calls a day.
Public Administration Minster Ivan Malenica said that the digital assistant was a voluntary and anonymous application.
The companies that have participated in the development of the application are Mindsmiths, Neos, Oracle Croatia and Infobip, members of the CroAI artificial intelligence association.
The government praised the companies for working free of charge on this project, aimed at combating the spread of the coronavirus.
Mislav Malenica, the founder of the Mindsmith company, said that Croatia was a step ahead of other countries by having developed the digital assistant that provides users with personalised health advice and guidance.
More coronavirus news can be found in the Lifestyle section.
