South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency will open an "AI health helper chatbot service" that anyone can use 24 hours a day from Oct. 28.

Developed through the ministry's public AI transformation (AX) project, the service will be available to anyone on the Community Health Survey website. It combines more than 5 million national health survey data points accumulated over the past 20 years with AI technology to provide information on an individual's health status and chronic disease risk.

Users can answer questions in the chatbot about height, weight and lifestyle habits to check their health level compared with groups of similar sex and age. It visualises chronic disease risk and other indicators with a health traffic light and graphs.

The service also provides guidance on prevention and management of major chronic diseases, including hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidaemia and obesity. It provides 24-hour answers to everyday health-management questions about sleep, exercise and diet. The chatbot uses health data that has been verified by a panel of medical and AI experts. It also applies an encryption system under national security rules to protect personal information.

Ji-wan Lim (임승관), commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, said opening the AI health counselling chatbot was "a representative example of data-driven public AX administration that returns public health data to the people." He said he hoped it would lead people to check their health status frequently and to prevent chronic diseases and practise healthy lifestyle habits.

Do-kyu Lee (이도규), director general of the Information and Communications Policy Office at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said it would continue to work closely with relevant ministries to provide various AI services that people can feel.