On-Line AIDS ‘Diagnosis’ Assesses Risks : Health: Pilot project in Oklahoma City and Dallas-Ft. Worth lets anyone with touch-tone telephone get advice.
A man concerned that he may have contracted the virus that causes AIDS meets with a counselor to discuss his fears. The counselor asks questions about sex and drugs that the man doesn’t feel comfortable discussing.
A computer could be one answer to the awkwardness. An Oklahoma social scientist is developing a program to help a person decide whether to be tested. Some health officials agree it has merits but aren’t certain it is right for every situation.
In 1987, Michael Wright had some money saved, as well as a computer, a printer and office furniture, after his appointment ended as a health planner at the Mary Mahoney Memorial Health Center in northeast Oklahoma City.
“It occurred to me that a private, anonymous encounter with a non-judgmental computer would be a good strategy to help people make a decision about whether to be tested for HIV antibody,” Wright said recently from his Norman, Okla., office.
Wright, who has a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Oklahoma, is developing the program with a $357,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute’s Small Business Innovation Research Program in 1991.
The institute is interested in the research because one of the more common diseases associated with AIDS is Kaposi’s sarcoma, a tumor of the blood or lymphatic vessel walls.
Anyone in the metropolitan areas of Oklahoma City and Dallas-Ft. Worth can pick up a touch-tone telephone, call the HIV Computer Risk Assessment Service and talk to a computer at no charge.
A recorded voice asks the caller for a sexual history dating to 1980, blood transfusion history before 1985, and intravenous drug use history.
The computer analyzes the information supplied by the caller and provides advice on whether that person is at risk of current HIV infection.
The advice is based on a number of variables, including the caller’s number of sexual partners, frequency of sexual intercourse, type of sexual intercourse and estimated frequency of condom use, Wright said.
The variables are cross-checked with local HIV prevalence estimates and estimates of infectivity of the virus.
During a demonstration, Wright dialed up the service and gave answers fitting the description of a male, intravenous drug user who had sex with a man at specific risk for HIV infection. The man also had a blood transfusion prior to May, 1985.
The computer advised the caller to get an HIV antibody test and told him he was at risk for the hepatitis B virus. It told him he could get a vaccine for hepatitis if he was not already infected.
Callers are told that the assessment is not a substitute for a medical test and are given a listing of several sites in the Oklahoma City and Dallas metro areas where they can go for tests.
In addition, the computer program talks about other peripheral issues associated with AIDS, including recreational drug use.
Bill Pierson, chief of the HIV/STD Service for the Oklahoma Department of Health, said the computer is a good approach to trying to cut down on the rate of false positives, or results that inaccurately indicate the presence of HIV antibodies.
But he said he is concerned about whether “talking to a machine and punching some numbers is going to really alleviate the fears.”
He said that “most times, there’s something that has caused people to have concern, they’ve heard something, or they’ve seen something and they want to assess that risk.”
Talking to a person helps in those situations, he said.
