How can conversational agents support doctors and patients with managing chronic conditions?
Please take note of the publication of the research article “Conversational Agents as Mediating Social Actors in Chronic Disease Management Involving Health Care Professionals, Patients, and Family Members: Multisite Single-Arm Feasibility Study”, recently published in Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR).
In their study, Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, Theresa Schachner, Samira Harperink, Dr. Filipe Barata, Prof. Dr. Ullrich Dittler, Grace Xiao, Dr. Catherine Stanger, Prof. Dr. Florian von Wangenheim, Prof. Dr. Elgar Fleisch, Dr. Helmut Oswald MD, and Prof. Dr. Alexander Möller MD explored whether conversational agents would be accepted in the role of supporting the collaboration between patients and healthcare providers in the context of working with children with asthma.
In this study, the authors were able to show that conversational agents can be successfully used in healthcare settings to support the management of chronic conditions such as asthma. In this study, this applied to children who had additional support from caregivers. The authors could show a significant increase in knowledge about asthma in participants. The collaboration with healthcare providers worked well and because the participants sent video clips to their healthcare providers on their inhalation technique, serious inhalation mistakes could be spotted and participants could learn the correct technique. The participants shared that they found the conversational agent engaging but would have liked more open-ended questions.
For further details, please refer to the published article and the Project Website.
Reference:
Kowatsch, T., Schachner, T., Harperink, S., Barata, F., Dittler, U., Xiao, G., Stanger, C., Oswald, H., Fleisch, E., von Wangenheim, F., Möller, A. (2021). Conversational Agents as Mediating Social Actors in Chronic Disease Management Involving Health Care Professionals, Patients, and Family Members: Multisite Single-Arm Feasibility Study, Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) 2021, 23(2):e25060 10.2196/25060. [PDF]
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