Ostro’s effort to boost the country’s less-than-stellar health literacy earned the startup a place in the Guinness World Records this week.
The company’s virtual course now holds the record for the most users to take an online lesson focused on AI and health literacy in a day — 698 people completed the course in a 24-hour period. Ostro, which sells AI-powered engagement technology to life sciences companies, teamed up with healthcare-focused marketing agency Havas Health Network to launch the 30-minute course.
Ahmed Elsayyad, co-founder and president of Ostro, said that the course was designed to bridge the gap between AI experts and healthcare professionals. AI experts can learn more about health literacy in healthcare, while healthcare professionals can better understand AI’s applications in their field.
The course addressed frequently asked questions from both communities, including why generative AI models can sometimes be misleading, Elsayyad noted.
“I’ve heard folks afterwards saying, ‘I finally understand this — this idea that it’s important to be careful of generative AI,’ because unlike other use cases, in healthcare, you don’t want some random response from a Redditor to answer your question,” he stated.
The course also educates healthcare and life sciences professionals on AI applications and compliance, as well as the importance of upholding human decision making.
Chase Feiger, Ostro’s CEO and other co-founder, described the course as a roadmap that can help people break down technical concepts and complex regulatory rules into digestible sections.
“The course is broken down into several different topics. There is a whole section on compliance, a whole section on human-in-the-loop. And how do you actually marry AI with a human in the loop? So there’s several different sections on how to actually implement and launch, given the existing infrastructure and standards within life sciences. It’s very specific, and I think that certain sections might resonate more with certain folks over others,” he explained.
The Guinness World Record may already be set, but Feiger said Ostro hopes the course continues to reach new users — and that other AI companies follow suit with efforts to improve health and AI literacy.
Photo: inkoly, Getty Images
