Rosie the Chatbot: Leveraging Automated and Personalized Health Information Communication

April 28, 2026 updated by: University of Maryland, College Park

Rosie the Chatbot: Leveraging Automated and Personalized Health Information Communication to Reduce Disparities in Maternal and Child Health

Rosie the Chatbot is an educational chatbot that moms can have on their computers or cellphones and will work by moms typing in their questions about pregnancy, health, infant milestones, and other variety of health related topics and receiving back a response immediately. Rosie only provides information from verified sources such as children's hospitals, health organizations and government agencies. Rosie does not ask moms to provide any personal information on her or her child, her chat is completely confidential, it works in English and Spanish and will be free.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

This study will examine whether the use of a chatbot to impart health information to minority women during pregnancy and postpartum period improves health care seeking behavior and maternal and infant health outcomes. This study does not involve administration of an investigational intervention and therefore poses minimal risk to participants.

Aim 1: Develop technology for a "chatbot" that will provide health information support to vulnerable mothers the moment they need it.

Aim 2: Evaluate the use of Rosie on maternal and infant outcomes. Aim 3: Release an open-source packet for the construction of a chatbot.

  • Participants in the study will be randomly assigned into one of two groups, Rosie the Chatbot group (treatment group) and Book Club group (control group).
  • Participants in the Rosie the Chatbot Group will be taking a pre-test health survey, mid-test health survey, and post-test health survey. In addition, they will be expected to actively use the chatbot app by asking questions related to maternal and infant health and selecting "thumbs up or thumbs down" to provide feedback for questions' response and use the features (video library, resources page, frequently asked questions (FAQ), and daily syllabus).
  • Participants in the Book Club Group will be taking a pre-test health survey, mid-test health survey, and post-test health survey. In addition, they will receive a monthly children's book, which they are expected to read with baby if parenting or individually if pregnant.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

400

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Maryland
      • College Park, Maryland, United States, 20742
        • University of Maryland

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Age 14 years and older
  • Racial minority women
  • Pregnant or has an infant < 6 months
  • Must be able to read English or Spanish

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Mother younger than 14 years of age at time of child's birth.
  • Non-hispanic white

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Rosie the Chatbot Group
Participants in the Rosie the Chatbot Group will be taking a pre-test health survey, mid-test health survey, and post-test health survey. In addition, they will be expected to actively use the chatbot app by asking questions related to maternal and infant health and selecting "thumbs up or thumbs down" to provide feedback for questions' response and using the features (video library, resources page, frequently asked questions (FAQ), and daily syllabus).
Behavioral: Rosie the Chatbot
Participants in the intervention group will be using the chatbot to ask questions related to the mom and baby's health, provide feedback "selecting thumbs up or thumbs down" on the questions' response, and use the features (video library, resources page, frequently asked questions (FAQ), and daily syllabus). In addition, participants will be taking a pre-test health survey, mid-test health survey, and post-test health survey.
No Intervention: Book Club Group
Participants in the Book Club Group will be taking a pre-test health survey, mid-test health survey, and post-test health survey. In addition, they will receive a monthly children's book, which they are expected to read with baby if parenting or individually if pregnant.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Maternal postpartum depression
Time Frame: 12 months post randomization
The investigators will utilize the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) Scale to measure maternal depression. This scale can range from 0 to 27, since each of the 9 items can be scored from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day). Higher scores indicate worse depression severity.
12 months post randomization
Number of emergency room visits
Time Frame: 12 months post randomization
The investigators will measure the number of visits to the emergency room.
12 months post randomization
Attendance of well-baby visits (preventive healthcare visits)
Time Frame: 12 months post randomization
The investigators will measure the number of well-baby visits.
12 months post randomization

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of Maryland, College Park

Collaborators

National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Quynh C Nguyen, PhD, University of Maryland
  • Principal Investigator: Elizabeth M Aparicio, PhD, LCSW-C, University of Maryland

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

October 13, 2023

Primary Completion (Actual)

January 23, 2026

Study Completion (Actual)

January 23, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 15, 2023

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 15, 2023

First Posted (Actual)

September 25, 2023

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 5, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 28, 2026

Last Verified

April 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 5R01MD016037-03 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)
  • 3R01MD016037-03S1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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