{"id":27480,"date":"2025-07-28T12:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/27480\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T12:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:47:11","slug":"council-in-peterborough-turns-experienced-worker-into-ai-chatbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/27480\/","title":{"rendered":"Council in Peterborough turns experienced worker into AI chatbot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Howgego<\/p>\n

BBC political reporter, Peterborough<\/p>\n

\"PeterboroughPeterborough City Council<\/p>\n

Geraldine Jinks has worked for Peterborough City Council for 35 years<\/p>\n

The knowledge of an experienced council worker has been turned into an AI chatbot to help fellow employees.<\/p>\n

Geraldine Jinks has worked for Peterborough City Council for 35 years as a therapy practitioner supporting adult social care, and her colleagues often ask her for advice.<\/p>\n

The council said she was often inundated with questions and, although she was happy to help, it did put pressure on her time. <\/p>\n

Her manager recognised this, and the authority started working on a technological solution, developing a tool called Hey Geraldine. <\/p>\n

Ms Jinks worked with the team to feed information to the AI tool so it could answer questions asked on a daily basis in her usual chatty and direct manner.<\/p>\n

“It was so exciting to develop this chatbot,” she said. <\/p>\n

“Staff can now ask me questions whenever they want and receive a reply straightaway.<\/p>\n

“It’s lovely that they’ve kept my name and some staff have told me that they actually thought they were chatting with me \u2013 I guess that’s because I’ve written all the answers!”<\/p>\n

The council said Hey Geraldine could respond to “contextual and practice-based questions” such as, “I am working with a person who is forgetting to turn the oven off. What is available to help them?” <\/p>\n

It would then provide a range of answers and possible solutions and links to resources.<\/p>\n

It is hoped the technology will make it easier and quicker to discharge people from hospital. <\/p>\n

\"Front<\/p>\n

Peterborough City Council began developing the new AI tool in 2023<\/p>\n

Shabina Qayyum is the council’s cabinet member for adults and health and also works as a GP. <\/p>\n

“I know how incredibly frustrating it can be for patients who are delayed in returning to their home after a stay in hospital,” she said.<\/p>\n

Delays also have an impact on the finances of both the NHS and local authorities.<\/p>\n

“The use of technology-assisted care like smart devices and home activity sensors can really help people to regain their independence quickly. <\/p>\n

“The Hey Geraldine chatbot helps staff to put these technologies in place with all the knowledge and care that Geraldine herself would use.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Howgego BBC political reporter, Peterborough Peterborough City Council Geraldine Jinks has worked for Peterborough City Council for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-27480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}