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Dr. Ayo Olagoke on using AI in health communication
Solving complex problems with limited time is the daily reality for many of us. Today, Dr. Ayo Olagoke joins us to explore how AI can make that a little easier in the world of health communication.
Are you tackling big problems but are shy on time and resources? Thought so. So you’ll want to listen in. In today’s episode, Dr. Ayo Olagoke answers some important questions about AI in health communication and shares a very practical way she and her team are using AI to help address big challenges with minimal time and resources.
Hi, everybody. This is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication, now ranked a Top 10 Patient Engagement podcast of 2025! Giving you inspiration and strategies to improve engagement experience and satisfaction since 2017. I’m Dr. Anne Marie Liebel, a researcher, consultant, and educator with expertise in communication and education. I’m here to dig into some of what we might take for granted about communication in our professional lives. If you want to strengthen the work you can do in your professional sphere, this is a place for you because communication touches everything. We’re here to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, make the difference we got into our jobs to make.
Enjoying this show? It’s just the beginning. If your team needs real -world communication solutions, that’s
what we do. To learn more about working with us, visit healthcommunicationpartners.com or connect with me on linked.
And yes, big news. We’re now officially a Top 10 Show! Thank you so much for listening and downloading and sharing for all these years. We just found out we are a Top 10 Patient Engagement podcast of 2025. So thanks to Million Podcasts for this honor. We had no idea we were being considered, but hey, we’ll take it.
I’m live on Zoom with Dr. Ayo Olagoke, who is the Director at Better Health Connect. Dr. Olagoke has her PhD in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she is a postdoc at Washington University in St. Louis at the Health Communication Research Lab. She’s also a Google -certified AI prompt engineer, and she has a certificate in script writing from the New York Film Academy. Dr. Olagoke, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Anne, for having me. Appreciate it.
So I’ve got to ask the question, what is an issue or problem that you are facing related to health communication or
patient education?
Yeah, I’d like to start by saying: we do know there is a strong need need for evidence -based solution in healthcare, right? If you want to create a program that would maybe reduce diabetes, you don’t just want to try things. You want to try, you want to do something that there is evidence to support that it works. However, to create evidence -based health solution, we need research. We need researchers who do the research and get the evidence. To do this, researchers need funding. If they have to conduct rigorous research, you know, they need funding. So one of the
problems that we see is that when researchers are trying to apply for funding, they want to be able to prove to the funders that they can do the job. They want to be able to demonstrate feasibility. You know, to be able to say, if you give me this funding, I will do this research. To do that, many times they do what is called pilot study. Think of pilot study as, in business, a prototype. You know, you want to build a big machine, but then you are able to build a
prototype to say, here’s what I can do. If you give me money, I’ll do this big one. You think of it as a minimal viable product, you know, in business. So we have researchers who want to build a chatbot on mental health resources, you know, for community members to use. But then they need to build something small, at a low scale to be able to say, here’s what I’ve done. If you give me this funding, then I’ll be able to do more research to do something bigger. Here’s where the problem is. To develop this pilot, usually there’s not so much resources available. They’re asking, I have researchers asking me, can you create a pilot for us, a demo version of this thing that I’m hoping to apply for. So here’s where we then come in and help researchers sort that out. So that’s kind of like a big problem that we’ve been seeing in the health literacy domain.
It is a big problem and I think it’s one that a lot of our audience is going to be able to relate to. And it’s at the base of a lot of health communication. It’s at the base of a lot of patient education. It’s the research that we need to do and the funding for the research. So how are you facing this issue or problem when people are coming to you with these requests? What are you doing?
So I think one of the main thing that I realized is people asking, Can we do this? And I’m like, AI can do this. When we think of AI, people think of AI differently. Some people are skeptic about it. What can it do? How can it help? OK, I know I can ask it to fix my favorite meal or search a restaurant nearby. But how can I bring it into health communication? So for example, I’ll give this example, the one I talked about, about about researchers from WashU
who wanted to build, that’s Washington University, who wanted to build a chatbot on mental health resources where people can just go and they’ll say, “Hey, I need resources on this.” And they use natural language, they don’t have to type it in a particular way. And they can say, “Hey, give me resource materials on this.” And the chatbot will give it to them. So they wanted to apply for funding to be able to build that I’ll be able to, you know, provide resources. But to do this, they needed to build something small, like a mini chatbot that could just demonstrate feasibility to founders to say, “Hey, this is what we’ve done.” And they came to us and were able to use some tools out there to say, “Hey, let’s create this for you.” So we built that with minimal resources, short period of time. And most of the things we’ve built in, we’ve done in less than 24 hours. So imagine being able to chat bot in less than 24 hours. That could do the basic things, that could answer the basic questions. And then you can go to founders to say, “Hey, if you fund us, then we can scale this.” And then it will be able to do something much more. So AI has been a great tool for us in creating multimodal health communication resources.
And you, you’ve answered my third question, which is what have you learned? And you know, that’s great. I really like what you were saying, too. Like, it knocked my socks off when you said you were able to do some of this in 24 hours. That helps me wrap my head around it. Like, it really can be that quick. There are tools that you can use to put things together that fast. So what are the next steps for you in terms of your work with AI, right? You’re facing this problem of helping researchers get pilots and prototypes out there. And I also want to know if you’ve got advice for people who might see themselves in your situation or in these researchers’ situation and saying, yeah, how can I get a prototype out there? I have an idea in my head, and I think if I could show it to people in a robust way, that I might be able to get better funding for it. So, you know, I’m interested to see if you have anything to say to folks like that.
Yeah, absolutely. Some of our next step, which we already started doing is testing and testing, message testing. We’re doing lots of message message testing research. So for example, we’re currently testing, we did a randomized control trial, the message testing RCT where we asked people, we gave a group the FDA website on the newly approved flu COVID combo test kits. So we asked some people to read it on the website for the FDA and then we used AI to generate a video seeing the same thing, like a one minute video. So we asked another group to watch the AI -generated video and they were testing effectiveness and they were asking people about perceived message, effectiveness, how effective you think the message is and we’re comparing both groups. So we need to do a lot of that.
So how about advice you have for folks who are interested in this, who are interested in maybe trying to get, trying to use AI to help make the argument for the funding for the research that they need to do? Yeah, you know, just like we’re saying before this that people in different stages, there are people who have who work with teams or a group of
people where they have like a health communication expert on their team. There are people who are like, they work alone. So depending on your situation, one major thing is if you have enough resources I would say invest in learning about you know get certified as a prompt engineer you can start from there. You can take things like the google certification some are free some are paid just to get that knowledge. The more we know the more we are able to do. So getting the knowledge that is needed. I also know about the IHA as Institute for Healthcare Advancement where they
share, they have conversations from time to time on people working using AI and they share learning points, which has also been a great place for me to learn. People share things like, here’s what we’re discovering, here’s what we’re doing with AI. So that could be a group that you may wanna take advantage of and join as well.
Definitely. Shout out. Shout out to IHA and–
They’re doing a great job. I think we connected on that platform. Yes, so definitely.
Yes, IHA Institute for Healthcare Advancement.
It’s been a great resource for me. And definitely, I’m also open to connect with folks who are willing to learn how to leverage AI for their health communication group or team or project as well.
Absolutely! Dr. Ayo Olagoke, thank you so much for coming to the show today.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks again to Dr. Ayo Olagoke. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe now so you never miss a show. And leave a quick review to help others find us. Coming up next, we’re talking about trust, and I hope you’ll join us. This has been 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, Audio Engineering and Music by Joe Liebel, Additionally Music from Alexis Rounds. Thanks for listening to 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, LLC. Find us at healthcommunicationpartners .com.
The post Dr. Ayo Olagoke on using AI in health communication appeared first on Health Communication Partners.
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Solving complex problems with limited time is the daily reality for many of us. Today, Dr. Ayo Olagoke joins us to explore how AI can make that a little easier in the world of health communication.
Are you tackling big problems but are shy on time and resources? Thought so. So you’ll want to listen in. In today’s episode, Dr. Ayo Olagoke answers some important questions about AI in health communication and shares a very practical way she and her team are using AI to help address big challenges with minimal time and resources.
Hi, everybody. This is 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication, now ranked a Top 10 Patient Engagement podcast of 2025! Giving you inspiration and strategies to improve engagement experience and satisfaction since 2017. I’m Dr. Anne Marie Liebel, a researcher, consultant, and educator with expertise in communication and education. I’m here to dig into some of what we might take for granted about communication in our professional lives. If you want to strengthen the work you can do in your professional sphere, this is a place for you because communication touches everything. We’re here to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, make the difference we got into our jobs to make.
Enjoying this show? It’s just the beginning. If your team needs real -world communication solutions, that’s
what we do. To learn more about working with us, visit healthcommunicationpartners.com or connect with me on linked.
And yes, big news. We’re now officially a Top 10 Show! Thank you so much for listening and downloading and sharing for all these years. We just found out we are a Top 10 Patient Engagement podcast of 2025. So thanks to Million Podcasts for this honor. We had no idea we were being considered, but hey, we’ll take it.
I’m live on Zoom with Dr. Ayo Olagoke, who is the Director at Better Health Connect. Dr. Olagoke has her PhD in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she is a postdoc at Washington University in St. Louis at the Health Communication Research Lab. She’s also a Google -certified AI prompt engineer, and she has a certificate in script writing from the New York Film Academy. Dr. Olagoke, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Anne, for having me. Appreciate it.
So I’ve got to ask the question, what is an issue or problem that you are facing related to health communication or
patient education?
Yeah, I’d like to start by saying: we do know there is a strong need need for evidence -based solution in healthcare, right? If you want to create a program that would maybe reduce diabetes, you don’t just want to try things. You want to try, you want to do something that there is evidence to support that it works. However, to create evidence -based health solution, we need research. We need researchers who do the research and get the evidence. To do this, researchers need funding. If they have to conduct rigorous research, you know, they need funding. So one of the
problems that we see is that when researchers are trying to apply for funding, they want to be able to prove to the funders that they can do the job. They want to be able to demonstrate feasibility. You know, to be able to say, if you give me this funding, I will do this research. To do that, many times they do what is called pilot study. Think of pilot study as, in business, a prototype. You know, you want to build a big machine, but then you are able to build a
prototype to say, here’s what I can do. If you give me money, I’ll do this big one. You think of it as a minimal viable product, you know, in business. So we have researchers who want to build a chatbot on mental health resources, you know, for community members to use. But then they need to build something small, at a low scale to be able to say, here’s what I’ve done. If you give me this funding, then I’ll be able to do more research to do something bigger. Here’s where the problem is. To develop this pilot, usually there’s not so much resources available. They’re asking, I have researchers asking me, can you create a pilot for us, a demo version of this thing that I’m hoping to apply for. So here’s where we then come in and help researchers sort that out. So that’s kind of like a big problem that we’ve been seeing in the health literacy domain.
It is a big problem and I think it’s one that a lot of our audience is going to be able to relate to. And it’s at the base of a lot of health communication. It’s at the base of a lot of patient education. It’s the research that we need to do and the funding for the research. So how are you facing this issue or problem when people are coming to you with these requests? What are you doing?
So I think one of the main thing that I realized is people asking, Can we do this? And I’m like, AI can do this. When we think of AI, people think of AI differently. Some people are skeptic about it. What can it do? How can it help? OK, I know I can ask it to fix my favorite meal or search a restaurant nearby. But how can I bring it into health communication? So for example, I’ll give this example, the one I talked about, about about researchers from WashU
who wanted to build, that’s Washington University, who wanted to build a chatbot on mental health resources where people can just go and they’ll say, “Hey, I need resources on this.” And they use natural language, they don’t have to type it in a particular way. And they can say, “Hey, give me resource materials on this.” And the chatbot will give it to them. So they wanted to apply for funding to be able to build that I’ll be able to, you know, provide resources. But to do this, they needed to build something small, like a mini chatbot that could just demonstrate feasibility to founders to say, “Hey, this is what we’ve done.” And they came to us and were able to use some tools out there to say, “Hey, let’s create this for you.” So we built that with minimal resources, short period of time. And most of the things we’ve built in, we’ve done in less than 24 hours. So imagine being able to chat bot in less than 24 hours. That could do the basic things, that could answer the basic questions. And then you can go to founders to say, “Hey, if you fund us, then we can scale this.” And then it will be able to do something much more. So AI has been a great tool for us in creating multimodal health communication resources.
And you, you’ve answered my third question, which is what have you learned? And you know, that’s great. I really like what you were saying, too. Like, it knocked my socks off when you said you were able to do some of this in 24 hours. That helps me wrap my head around it. Like, it really can be that quick. There are tools that you can use to put things together that fast. So what are the next steps for you in terms of your work with AI, right? You’re facing this problem of helping researchers get pilots and prototypes out there. And I also want to know if you’ve got advice for people who might see themselves in your situation or in these researchers’ situation and saying, yeah, how can I get a prototype out there? I have an idea in my head, and I think if I could show it to people in a robust way, that I might be able to get better funding for it. So, you know, I’m interested to see if you have anything to say to folks like that.
Yeah, absolutely. Some of our next step, which we already started doing is testing and testing, message testing. We’re doing lots of message message testing research. So for example, we’re currently testing, we did a randomized control trial, the message testing RCT where we asked people, we gave a group the FDA website on the newly approved flu COVID combo test kits. So we asked some people to read it on the website for the FDA and then we used AI to generate a video seeing the same thing, like a one minute video. So we asked another group to watch the AI -generated video and they were testing effectiveness and they were asking people about perceived message, effectiveness, how effective you think the message is and we’re comparing both groups. So we need to do a lot of that.
So how about advice you have for folks who are interested in this, who are interested in maybe trying to get, trying to use AI to help make the argument for the funding for the research that they need to do? Yeah, you know, just like we’re saying before this that people in different stages, there are people who have who work with teams or a group of
people where they have like a health communication expert on their team. There are people who are like, they work alone. So depending on your situation, one major thing is if you have enough resources I would say invest in learning about you know get certified as a prompt engineer you can start from there. You can take things like the google certification some are free some are paid just to get that knowledge. The more we know the more we are able to do. So getting the knowledge that is needed. I also know about the IHA as Institute for Healthcare Advancement where they
share, they have conversations from time to time on people working using AI and they share learning points, which has also been a great place for me to learn. People share things like, here’s what we’re discovering, here’s what we’re doing with AI. So that could be a group that you may wanna take advantage of and join as well.
Definitely. Shout out. Shout out to IHA and–
They’re doing a great job. I think we connected on that platform. Yes, so definitely.
Yes, IHA Institute for Healthcare Advancement.
It’s been a great resource for me. And definitely, I’m also open to connect with folks who are willing to learn how to leverage AI for their health communication group or team or project as well.
Absolutely! Dr. Ayo Olagoke, thank you so much for coming to the show today.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks again to Dr. Ayo Olagoke. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe now so you never miss a show. And leave a quick review to help others find us. Coming up next, we’re talking about trust, and I hope you’ll join us. This has been 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, Audio Engineering and Music by Joe Liebel, Additionally Music from Alexis Rounds. Thanks for listening to 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication from Health Communication Partners, LLC. Find us at healthcommunicationpartners .com.
The post Dr. Ayo Olagoke on using AI in health communication appeared first on Health Communication Partners.
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