Meet Vira, the Vax Chatbot

Vira, the Vax Chatbot is designed to support and meet young people where they are with simple answers to common Covid-19 vaccine questions. Vira is adaptive, learning by listening to your questions and feedback to help scientists respond to emerging questions.

Vira was developed by the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with experts from the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health and Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering. Vira’s knowledge base from Johns Hopkins vaccine scientists was developed with support from the Covid-19 Training Initiative, with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies. VaxChat, powered by IBM, was inspired by previous research that showed automated chatbots using AI can effectively communicate credible information and support health behavior changes.