Clara is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered search engine trained on resources about arthritis that have been verified by Arthritis NSW.
When somebody asks Clara a question, the application uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to search a closed, curated database of articles, resources and other expert information. The retrieved content is then condensed by a Large Language Model (LLM), which makes sense of the question that has been asked. It provides a response in natural language, making it easy to understand.
All resources in the database have been produced by Arthritis NSW and other trusted partners.
What are the benefits of Clara?
Clara is designed to help those recently diagnosed and living with arthritis gain control and confidence by providing trusted and tailored resources delivered conveniently and easily.
What are the limitations of Clara?
In early iterations of Clara, we will likely identify content gaps where we don’t have the relevant answers. Clara will be trained to provide the nearest accurate result, and if insufficient information is available, advise the user that it doesn’t have enough information to provide a response.
What are the ethical concerns associated with Clara?
Privacy Issues
Clara has embedded privacy-by-design practices and principles into all designs, technology choices, and system infrastructure. Privacy is the default setting; no personally identifiable data is stored or shared with the servers. The questions are anonymised and encrypted before being requested from the Clara database. The only data stored and managed will be the publicly accessible content.
Health Advice
The content generated by Clara provides summaries that may contain general health information and advice. This information is trained on content vetted and monitored by Arthritis NSW. Clara has been explicitly trained not to present information from outside our database as a source of its answers. Every effort has been made to ensure the information is accurate and reliable. The content in this summary is not a substitute for the individual treatment advice of your doctor or health professional. Always consult your doctor or healthcare provider to obtain individual or treatment advice.
The safety of our users is of the utmost importance; if you see content you believe is questionable or unsuitable, please get in touch with support acairns@arthritisnsw.org.au
Clara updates
In February 2024, Arthritis NSW released a pilot to select users for training and development purposes.