Developing a Chatbot to Promote HIV Testing

In this study, the feasibility of a Chatbot in promoting HIV testing in a pilot RCT with 80 men who have sex with men in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia will be studied. Participants will be randomized to Chatbot or treatment as usual (TAU) groups. Participants in the intervention group will receive automated personalized messages containing HIV testing-related information, motivation and skills.

After informed consent, participants will be randomly assigned to Chatbot or TAU groups using stratified randomization by age. Participants in TAU will receive attention-matched educational materials manually sent by the research assistant. Participants in the intervention group will receive an automated personalized question message (root-node message) from the Chabot. In each round of the interactive communication, the Chatbot will provide automated personalized messages containing HIV testing-related information, motivation and skills based on participants' answers and will continuously update over time. Participants will be observed over 180 days with responses and interactions stored on a HIPAA-compliant and protected cloud. An independent assessment of recent testing and reasons why will be sent by link to both TAU and intervention groups using a link to a Qualtrics survey housed on REDCap at baseline and after 90 and 180 days. After 180 days, the RA will send an additional REDCap survey to intervention participants to assess the feasibility of the Chabot to measure 4 key elements: acceptability, practicality, demand, and adaptation.

Attention-matched educational materials manually sent by our research assistant. These educational materials will be retrieved from CDC and WHO websites and curated into short articles (<200 words) and pictures. All educational materials will be screened by HIV experts from University of Malaya to ensure accuracy before being sent to participants.

The efficacy of the Chatbot versus TAU with HIV testing as the primary outcome will be measured. The primacy efficacy outcome is the proportion of MSM who get tested within 180 days. This will be measured every 30 days by asking if MSM tested for HIV in the past 30 days.

The number of participants contacted divided by the number of participants who signed the consent form

The number of participants who signed the consent form divided by the number of participants who completed the study

Inclusion Criteria: cis-gender male 18+ years; had condomless sex with men in the past 6 months has a smartphone speaks Bahasa Malay or English. Exclusion Criteria: Not able to read Malay or English