For the elders who never opened an app.
We are designing a WhatsApp voice assistant, working name Alero, for Ìwẹrẹ Care. The idea is simple: many of our elders already use WhatsApp but will never open a website. They could send a voice note in Itsekiri or Pidgin, and the assistant would pass it to the nurse at their health centre. It is not live yet. It will never give medical advice. A nurse and a volunteer physician make every medical decision.
Ìwẹrẹ CARE · IN DESIGN · PILOT CENTRES: JAKPA AND UGBEGE, WARRI NORTH LGA · PLANNED: WARRI CENTRAL AND SAPELE
1. The nurse. She go call you about the refill.
2. The physician. A physician go review am before any medicine is given.
3. You. Wait for the call. You no need to travel.9:40 AM
Six exchanges. One message that reaches a nurse.
This is a sample conversation, written to show how we want the assistant to behave. An elder sends a voice note about a refill. The assistant answers with respect, passes the request to the nurse at the health centre, and tells the elder a person will call. It does not decide anything medical. Nothing here describes a real patient or a real visit.
Voice in. Request out.
The assistant would turn the voice note into text and recognise what is being asked.
Passed to a person.
The request goes to the nurse at the health centre. A physician reviews anything to do with medicine.
Reply. Respectful.
A short voice and text reply. Family abroad are updated only if the elder agrees.
The sample conversation · in full
What we will measure
How your mother would use this, without learning anything new.
Your mother would not download an app or sign up. She would do what she already does: press the microphone in WhatsApp and speak. The assistant would be on the other end, and a nurse would be behind it.
Family abroad stay informed, with her permission. We plan for a short update to reach you when something happens. Your mother decides what her children see.
Languages we plan to support · to be tested with elders
Where we plan to start
Messages stay between your family and INC-USA. Privacy designed in from the start.
WhatsApp encrypts messages as they travel. Our plan is to keep your mother’s messages only where her care team needs them, and never with marketers. Clinical content will never be shared with family without her explicit consent. We plan for people from our community to review a sample of conversations for respect and accuracy, and to fix anything that feels wrong.