GARDE-Chat: AI-Powered Platform for Digital Health Interventions

At the University of Utah Department of Biomedical Informatics, researchers are leveraging artificial intelligence to transform how health interventions are delivered at scale. Professors Guilherme Del Fiol and Ken Kawamoto lead the development of GARDE-Chat, an open-source authoring platform that enables health researchers to create chatbot-based digital health interventions without writing a single line of code.

Professor Del Fiol & Professor Kawamoto

Digital health offers tremendous opportunities to improve population-level health outcomes, and GARDE-Chat makes these solutions accessible. The platform supports rule-based, LLM-based, and hybrid chatbots, providing flexibility for a wide range of projects. To date, GARDE-Chat has powered more than 15 initiatives, from feasibility pilots to large pragmatic trials involving up to 100,000 patients. These interventions have increased uptake of evidence-based services such as genetic testing for hereditary cancer, tobacco cessation treatment, and at-home COVID-19 testing.

The impact extends beyond patient care. GARDE-Chat has helped researchers secure over $35 million in federal funding for the University of Utah, strengthening its leadership in digital health innovation. Collaborators span multiple disciplines and institutions, including Population Health Sciences, Communication, Kinesiology, Physical Therapy, and Biomedical Informatics, as well as 13 safety-net Community Health Centers across Utah and academic partners nationwide.

Funded by several grants from agencies such as the NIH and the CDC, GARDE-Chat exemplifies how AI can make healthcare interventions scalable, effective, and easier to implement.

Contributors: Guilherme Del Fiol, Ken Kawamoto and collaborators across campus and partner institutions

For more information, contact: guilherme.delfiol@utah.edu and kensaku.kawamoto@utah.edu.