Fine-Tuning DialoGPT on Common Diseases in Rural Nepal for Medical Conversations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Poudel, Birat, Ghimire, Satyam, Prasad, Er. Prakash Chandra
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Poudel, Birat
Ghimire, Satyam
Prasad, Er. Prakash Chandra
author_facet Poudel, Birat
Ghimire, Satyam
Prasad, Er. Prakash Chandra
contents Conversational agents are increasingly being explored to support healthcare delivery, particularly in resource-constrained settings such as rural Nepal. Large-scale conversational models typically rely on internet connectivity and cloud infrastructure, which may not be accessible in rural areas. In this study, we fine-tuned DialoGPT, a lightweight generative dialogue model that can operate offline, on a synthetically constructed dataset of doctor-patient interactions covering ten common diseases prevalent in rural Nepal, including common cold, seasonal fever, diarrhea, typhoid fever, gastritis, food poisoning, malaria, dengue fever, tuberculosis, and pneumonia. Despite being trained on a limited, domain-specific dataset, the fine-tuned model produced coherent, contextually relevant, and medically appropriate responses, demonstrating an understanding of symptoms, disease context, and empathetic communication. These results highlight the adaptability of compact, offline-capable dialogue models and the effectiveness of targeted datasets for domain adaptation in low-resource healthcare environments, offering promising directions for future rural medical conversational AI.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_00514
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fine-Tuning DialoGPT on Common Diseases in Rural Nepal for Medical Conversations
Poudel, Birat
Ghimire, Satyam
Prasad, Er. Prakash Chandra
Computation and Language
Conversational agents are increasingly being explored to support healthcare delivery, particularly in resource-constrained settings such as rural Nepal. Large-scale conversational models typically rely on internet connectivity and cloud infrastructure, which may not be accessible in rural areas. In this study, we fine-tuned DialoGPT, a lightweight generative dialogue model that can operate offline, on a synthetically constructed dataset of doctor-patient interactions covering ten common diseases prevalent in rural Nepal, including common cold, seasonal fever, diarrhea, typhoid fever, gastritis, food poisoning, malaria, dengue fever, tuberculosis, and pneumonia. Despite being trained on a limited, domain-specific dataset, the fine-tuned model produced coherent, contextually relevant, and medically appropriate responses, demonstrating an understanding of symptoms, disease context, and empathetic communication. These results highlight the adaptability of compact, offline-capable dialogue models and the effectiveness of targeted datasets for domain adaptation in low-resource healthcare environments, offering promising directions for future rural medical conversational AI.
title Fine-Tuning DialoGPT on Common Diseases in Rural Nepal for Medical Conversations
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00514