AI Quarantine Assistant "SKT 'NUGU Care Call' Surpasses 3 Million Calls"

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Cho] SK Telecom announced on the 19th that its AI service ‘NUGU carecall,’ which monitors the condition of COVID-19 self-quarantine and active surveillance subjects via phone calls, has exceeded 3 million calls.

This is the result of steadily increasing the number of contracted local governments since the official service launch in May last year. During this period, ‘NUGU carecall’ achieved approximately 33,000 hours of call records targeting about 270,000 COVID-19 self-quarantine and active surveillance subjects.

NUGU carecall is a system where SK Telecom’s AI NUGU checks the presence of COVID-19 related symptoms such as fever, body temperature, cough, and sore throat of self-quarantine and active surveillance subjects through phone calls. SK Telecom built the AI agent on the mobile communication network, enabling subjects to use the service simply by answering the phone without any separate application or device.

Currently, SK Telecom is providing ‘NUGU carecall’ services with a total of 53 institutions, including all 25 districts of Seoul. The company added that this has resulted in about an 85% reduction in monitoring work for self-quarantine and active surveillance subjects by related institutions such as public health centers.

Along with this, SK Telecom is also operating ‘NUGU vaccine carecall,’ which informs COVID-19 vaccination candidates of their vaccination schedule in advance by phone and monitors the occurrence of adverse reaction symptoms after vaccination. Since the start of commercial service on the 28th of last month, it has signed service provision agreements with the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and five metropolitan local governments including Chungcheongnam-do and Gwangju Metropolitan City.

In addition, functions helpful for quarantine activities such as ▲specifying call time ▲setting redial ▲automatic response for after-hours support are being continuously added. SK Telecom is also preparing an AI phone monitoring service for elderly living alone, aiming for release in the second half of this year.

Hyun-A Lee, Head of SK Telecom AI&CO (Company), said, “We are pleased that ‘NUGU carecall’ and ‘NUGU vaccine carecall’ are helping overcome COVID-19,” and added, “We will continue to consider ways in which AI technology can create and deliver important ESG values to our society in the future.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.