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AI Assistant for Public Health Staff Queries

What it is for

Inform
  • HELIX enables agency staff to ask general questions and receive AI-generated text responses. It can also be grounded on approved documents to answer document-specific queries. Outputs may be shared with the public.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Run by
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.
Shared with
Accountable organization, Vendor

What it is for

Inform

HELIX is a generative AI tool used by staff at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to ask questions and receive text responses, either from a general-purpose AI model or from a set of approved agency documents. Staff may share the outputs with the public. The system is built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI using the GPT-4o model, and training data is proprietary to the vendor.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

About behaviour
Identifiable data
  • Prompts entered by agency staff into the system. These are text queries composed by staff and constitute the primary runtime input. Staff identity may be associated with these prompts.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Processing

Language Models
  • HELIX uses the OpenAI GPT-4o large language model, hosted on Microsoft Azure OpenAI, to process staff prompts and generate text responses. Training data is proprietary to the vendor.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Search & Retrieval
  • In document-grounded configurations, HELIX retrieves relevant passages from approved agency documents to inform its generated responses. This retrieval-augmented approach allows staff to query specific approved content.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

What it does

Creating (Generative AI)
Human decides
  • HELIX generates text responses to staff prompts using the OpenAI GPT-4o model. It operates in a generative mode — producing new text that did not previously exist — with the staff member reviewing and deciding whether to use or share the output.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Understanding (Semantic AI)
Human decides
  • When grounded on approved documents, HELIX retrieves and understands relevant content from those documents to answer staff queries — matching questions to document-specific knowledge before generating a response.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Outputs

Generated content
Anonymized data
  • The output is a text response generated by the GPT-4o large language model, either from general model knowledge or grounded in approved agency documents. These outputs may be shared with the public by staff.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Run by

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH)
  • The agency that deploys and operates HELIX for use by its staff. The Division of Information Technology manages the tool within the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Built by

Microsoft
  • Microsoft supplies the Azure OpenAI platform on which HELIX is built, providing access to the GPT-4o model. The tool is an off-the-shelf solution from Microsoft.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Kept for

Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.

Shared with

Available to the accountable organization
  • Outputs generated by HELIX are available to NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene staff who use the system. Staff may then share outputs with the public at their discretion.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Available to vendor
  • As an Azure OpenAI-based service, Microsoft as the infrastructure vendor may have access to prompts and outputs processed through the platform, subject to the terms of the service agreement. Training data is proprietary to the vendor.

NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report — HELIX

Stored

Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.

How to read the colours

Can it identify you?

Anonymized data
Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
Pseudonymous data
Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
Identifiable data
The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.

Who completes the loop?

Human decides
This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
Human executes
This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
Autonomous
This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.

Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.

What you can do

Ask about this system

Questions go to the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, not the vendor.

Your rights

  • Right to Be Informed of AI UseMembers of the public who receive information that may have been generated or assisted by HELIX should be informed that AI tools are used by agency staff to compose responses. The NYC AI algorithmic tools register is publicly available and discloses this system's existence and purpose.
  • Right to Algorithmic TransparencyInformation about HELIX, including its purpose, vendor, and data handling, is publicly disclosed through the NYC Algorithmic Tools Compliance Report register at https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Algorithmic-Tools-Compliance-Report/jaw4-yuem.

Risks and safeguards

  • Societal & cultural harmAI-generated content shared publicly may contain inaccuracies, misinformation, or inappropriate material that could mislead the public or erode trust in health communications.Safeguard: Staff review outputs before sharing; HELIX is grounded on approved documents for domain-specific queries, reducing the risk of hallucination in official communications. Use is limited to agency staff rather than direct public deployment.
  • Reputational harmInaccurate or hallucinated AI responses, if shared publicly by staff as authoritative health communications, could damage the reputation of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene or mislead members of the public.Safeguard: Human staff review is required before outputs are shared; document-grounding on approved materials limits factual drift in official contexts.