See how algorithm engineers, medical workers, and volunteers are using AI to deliver love

The relevant person in charge of the Alzheimer's Disease (AD) Screening and Intervention Public Welfare Project shared the project experience at the 2023 Hangzhou Internet Positive Energy Boutique Release Ceremony (Photo courtesy of the Cyberspace Administration of the Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee).

Correspondent: Chen Yingguo, Reporter: Liu Yue

Draw a circular clock, memorize a few simple words and repeat them, and with the help of a mobile applet, you can complete a free self-service Alzheimer's disease screening online in less than 10 minutes. In the "2023 Most Influential Online Public Welfare Project in Hangzhou" announced last week, there are always projects with a sense of network, innovation, and warmth that bring surprises.

In 2016, the Cyberspace Administration of the Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Hangzhou Civil Affairs Bureau jointly launched the selection of the "Most Influential Online Public Welfare Project in Hangzhou of the Year", and a total of 695 projects were collected in 8 years, and more than 80 annual online public welfare projects were selected, continuously spreading positive energy of online public welfare to the society. Over the past 8 years, the atmosphere of "Internet + public welfare" has become increasingly strong in Hangzhou, and the continuous emergence of new ideas, new means and new methods has allowed us to see the diverse development forms of public welfare projects given by the Internet, and also witnessed the kindness and warmth of Hangzhou, the city of the Internet.

Today, let's take a look at how algorithm engineers, medical workers, public welfare teams and volunteers in the Alzheimer's Disease (AD) Screening Intervention Public Welfare Project work together online and offline to protect the "disappearing time" of the elderly.

A group of engineers with love

Silently did a "little thing"

Alzheimer's disease, better known as "Alzheimer's disease", is often accompanied by memory dysfunction and uncontrolled behavior. On the mainland, about 10 million people aged 60 and over are suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Due to the lack of specific drugs, the most effective strategy to delay the progression of Alzheimer's disease is still early screening and early diagnosis.

A group of young engineers saw all this and silently did a "little thing" - in early 2021, a group called the Alzheimer's Disease (AD) Screening Intervention Public Welfare Project Team was established in Hangzhou. These young people from Alibaba's large-scale model research team, Tongyi Labs, have mastered cutting-edge technologies in the field of technology, and they have also been actively following public welfare causes related to using artificial intelligence to help the elderly in their spare time.

Hu Ruofei, a product expert at Tongyi Laboratory, is the initiator of the project, and she has a clear positioning for this public welfare "how" from the beginning, "After forming a certain amount of technical accumulation in the fields of speech recognition, image understanding and text generation, we decided to use our own advantages to realize the early screening of Alzheimer's disease through AI." ”

"On the one hand, we are using our technology to develop a more convenient and intelligent screening tool, and on the other hand, we are using the advantages of the Internet to educate the elderly and their families that Alzheimer's disease needs to be paid attention to as soon as possible. ”

Today, three years later, looking back at the achievements of the project along the way, a self-check applet developed based on artificial intelligence technology has lit up the way home for many elderly people who are hovering at the crossroads of memory and forgetting.

Memorize a few simple words, draw a pattern of a circular clock, and repeat the words that were previously required to be memorized...... Many people may not imagine that today, compared with the conventional screening methods that take 20-30 minutes to complete, online self-service screening for Alzheimer's disease can be completed in less than 10 minutes through the "ADC Memory" applet on Alipay or WeChat.

According to statistics, as of December 2023, the project has carried out screening in 40 communities in 9 sub-districts of Hangzhou, including Xiaohe, Banshan, and Tianshui, serving 30,000 elderly people, and the "ADC Memory" applet has radiated to more than 290 cities in 34 provinces including Shanghai and Wuhan, providing Alzheimer's disease screening services for more than 260,000 people, and identifying nearly 20,000 high-risk groups.

From online to offline, and then to more people

Keeping the "disappearing time" of the elderly

When I went out for a walk, I met the sincere greeting of Sister Zhou, a social worker, and Aunt Wu, a resident of Banshan Street, Gongshu District, Hangzhou, had a strange interaction with the AI in her smartphone out of curiosity. "Now I'll read a few words, listen carefully, and remember, when I'm done, please tell me the words you remember......" "Face, silk, hotel, chrysanthemum, red, you say." ”

After a year of development, the project team, together with the School of Public Health of Zhejiang University and the Health Bureau of Gongshu District of Hangzhou, applied AI technology to offline screening of Alzheimer's disease for the first time.

As an elderly person in the family is also a patient with Alzheimer's disease, when participating in the volunteer service to promote the AD screening tool, Sister Zhou often recalls her deep regrets: "If we had found out that her emotions were wrong earlier, and had been tested and treated earlier, her situation might be much better than now." With the heart of "it would be good to be able to help one more person", Sister Zhou knocked on the doors of the elderly in the community door to door, comforted them with affection and reason, and patiently guided the elderly one after another to "dialogue" with AI. She knows that every time she clicks on the screening tool and guides the elderly to complete a test, maybe there will be a family that does not have to fall into the labyrinth of time and wander sadly in it.

While the volunteer team represented by Sister Zhou is selflessly working to protect the "disappearing time" of the elderly, the development team is also collecting data to optimize and improve the product. Hu Ruofei said: "When the screening tool was first put out for everyone to use, only about 20% of the elderly were willing to complete the test from the first step, but after the formal offline promotion, we were able to harvest more data to overcome the problems encountered in voice and image recognition, so as to improve the early defects and optimize the experience of using the tool." ”

Since then, the time cost of AI screening has been further reduced, and the scope of application has been expanded, which has laid the foundation for the tool to successfully move from offline to online, and has been proven to be "worthwhile" by time. In September 2022, after a year of precipitation and optimization, Alibaba and the Alzheimer's Disease Branch of the China Geriatric Health Care Association (ADC) cooperated to launch the "ADC Memory" public welfare mini program, officially transforming AI screening from offline manual assistance to online self-help.

In the process of continuous improvement and optimization of the project, a public welfare relay with engineers as the "first stick" ushered in the participation of different industries.

"We found that most of the elderly and even their families don't know where to see the disease and which department to hang it in, and we can help the elderly seek medical attention as soon as possible by recommending which doctor in the nearest hospital is a specialist in neurology," Hu said. "Algorithm engineers, medical workers, public welfare teams, volunteers...... Several groups that seem to be inseparable are connected in this way, and a wonderful spark has been sparked under the traction of a common cause.

Starting from the warm land of Hangzhou, the seeds of goodwill have been quietly planted, rooted and sprouted, and bore fruitful fruits. According to the data, at present, more than 250 volunteer doctors and 634 individual volunteers across the country have joined the volunteer service team for early screening and intervention through the Alzheimer's disease (AD) screening and intervention public welfare project. The project not only provides a set of scientific and effective cognitive screening methods for the public, but also continues to cooperate with celebrities and medical experts to carry out activities such as live broadcasts, Internet science popularization, offline lectures, etc., to popularize the content of early prevention and early treatment of Alzheimer's disease, and has so far educated more than 2.2 million people, so that this public welfare undertaking continues to extend......