Driving better health outcomes with Artificial Intelligence

Mount Mary collaboration with AWS Health Equity Initiative promotes care for all

It all began with a vision: to provide more responsive healthcare to a larger population—particularly those historically overlooked by the medical system, such as African American, Latinx, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ communities.

The idea has since made significant strides toward becoming reality, as a team of Mount Mary occupational therapy faculty and students created the Culturabot™ app. The technology helps medical care providers create customized patient care plans using artificial intelligence (AI) to gather multicultural data from scientifically reliable and respected open sources. This data includes culturally appropriate and plain language descriptions of care and ways to support access to healthcare services. The Culturabot™ app allows providers to gain valuable insights about their patients.

“Culturally sensitive care has been shown to improve health outcomes,” said Dr. Kari Inda, professor and chair of the Occupational Therapy department at Mount Mary and Culturabot™ project lead. “Understanding the background and needs of each patient is central to the therapeutic experience.”

Inda submitted the initial idea for the project to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Health Equity Initiative, which seeks to reduce inequities in healthcare outcomes among underserved populations across the globe. The project was awarded through the AWS Health Equity Initiative in early 2024, providing the Mount Mary team with innovative, cloud-based technology, such as generative ​AI and data collection systems, as well as expert consultants to help guide the development process.

Now in its testing phase, the Culturabot™ app is anticipated to be ready for release in 2025. Mount Mary occupational therapy students are currently using the platform with their patients during onsite clinical rotations and learning about its evolving capabilities.

The support from AWS provides the opportunity to scale the final product with the goal of making it available to a wider community of healthcare providers. The Mount Mary team is currently working with and seeking other potential corporate, venture and non-profit partners to determine and develop future commercial applications for the app.

“There’s such a need for delivering accessible services to the patient,” said Inda, who shared her excitement for this unique opportunity. “I’m thinking bigger already.”

This project is connected to Mount Mary’s new Institute for the Advancement of Women and Children, announced by university president Dr. Isabelle Cherney in 2023. The Institute includes four centers for championing leadership, health and wellness, advancement in technology and rights for women and children, and seeks to improve quality of life indicators among historically marginalized and vulnerable populations.