Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( 🔒 ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Need Help

AI-CChaSE: AI-enabled Cancer CHatbots for Symptom Education

Award Number: R01CA311924
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 05/01/2026
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 04/30/2031

Group Awards By:

View Award Description

AI-CChaSE: AI-enabled Cancer CHatbots for Symptom Education - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This proposal addresses an important, unmet need in cancer symptom management: cancer patients are routinely impacted by chronic symptoms caused by their disease and also by cancer-directed treatment. These long-term sequalae of cancer and cancer-therapy can be devastating to patients' physical, psychological, social, and financial wellbeing. However, high-quality symptom care is often limited by patient accessibility, patient and clinician education, and communication with and among the care team. Chatbots for symptom monitoring and management have been shown to improve patient empowerment, healthcare utilization, and outcomes, but have previously been limited to rules-based systems which can be inflexible, require significant manual effort to develop, and cannot easily adapt to new guidelines and user preferences. The overarching objective of this proposal will be to advance new methods and benchmarks for the development of guideline-grounded chatbots for improved cancer symptom education and communication. Our central innovation will be the research and development of efficient, extensible, and user-centered methods that leverage advances in large language models (LLMs) to convert clinical resources into usable, interactive technologies with improved performance and accessibility. In Specific Aim 1, we will improve the factuality of LLM question-answering about symptoms, which we will approach by developing new methods to link LLMs with knowledge in multi-modal clinical practice guidelines. In Specific Aim 2, we will investigate high-fidelity methods for LLM-based text simplification of recommendations in guidelines and the electronic health records to accommodate the different needs of end- users. In Specific Aim 3, we will study the needs, perceptions, concerns, and ethical considerations of patients and clinicians, which will inform technical developments is Specific Aims 1/2 and guide user-centered design for chatbot interfaces. The resulting interface will be evaluated in empirical studies. Patient and clinician stakeholders will be centered throughout all aims of our research. This work will be highly significant and innovative because it uses advances in artificial intelligence to amplify the availability of reliable information resources for cancer symptom care. These methods may thereby improve cancer outcomes and quality-of-life, while providing broad generalizable insights for the use of artificial intelligence-based information and education resources across biomedical fields.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $819,628 )
2026	2026	BRIGHAM & WOMENS HOSPITAL INC	75 FRANCIS ST	BOSTON	MA	02115	SUFFOLK	USA	Cancer Detection and Diagnosis Research	000	1	3/26/2026	NEW	$819,628
														Subtotal = $819,628

Grand Total All Awards = $819,628

Top

All Categories

About

Search

Reports

Data Submission

Award Information

AI-CChaSE: AI-enabled Cancer CHatbots for Symptom Education

Award Number: R01CA311924

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 05/01/2026

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 04/30/2031

Federal Websites

Department of Health & Human Services

HHS Operating Divisions

HHS Staff Divisions

Download A Document Viewer