The wSocial is launched, a tool for social services intervention with the help of artificial intelligence

The last month of August has been technologically prolific for the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion. A month in which years of work have begun to bear fruit. Not only has the interconnection of its information systems with those of Health begun to be deployed, but the wSocial, an innovative intervention tool, has also been launched. It is already being used by the social services of Manresa, Vic, Aran, and Esplugues de Llobregat and will gradually be rolled out to reach the 109 basic social services areas (ABSS) of Catalonia, that is, all municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants and all regions.

The TIC Salut Social Foundation has collaborated in the deployment of this tool by offering technological advice and in the creation, coding, and standardization of social concepts collected in InterSocial.

Currently, the basic areas work with very heterogeneous information systems, without integration between them or with the Department of Social Rights, which often results in the citizens themselves having to provide the information and even going to different agencies to obtain it.

In this regard, the wSocial represents a paradigm shift in social intervention, both for professionals and for users, as it connects and standardizes the information systems of the different ABSS and Social Rights. But it also contains Health data and is prepared to access information from other systems such as Education or Justice, and even from other administrations such as the Tax Agency or Social Security. In other words, it offers a 360-degree view of citizens’ information.

Technology at the service of professionals

The new tool, focused on people care, streamlines procedures, automates tasks, and facilitates information for decision-making, planning, evaluation, and transparency. Through keywords, it allows the detection of vulnerability situations and makes intervention proposals based on the existing benefits and services, both from the Department of Social Rights and the local level. However, it will always be the professional who validates the information and decides how to act. Shortly, wSocial will allow the automatic recording and transcription of the interview between the user and the social professional—and also the translation.

It is important to emphasize that data confidentiality and ethics are guaranteed, as well as traceability. Professionals will only have access to the information strictly necessary to do their job. Specific firewalls are applied for vulnerable profiles such as women victims of gender-based violence or children.

It is planned to collect a volume of 1,500,000 interviews to incorporate them into the system, allowing it to learn and automatically return the needs and situations detected during the conversation with citizens to the ABSS professionals.

The application also incorporates the Intersocial dictionary, which defines a controlled, coded, and standardized vocabulary for networking with all social services in Catalonia and SNOMED (international terminological standard) to code the dictionary concepts and interoperate with other systems using standardized concepts. For example, that the concept of “vulnerable housing” is the same in Barcelona, in the Conca de Barberà Regional Council, and in Helsinki.

Source: Press Release from the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion