Maintaining reality: Relational agents for antipsychotic medication adherence

Abstract

a b s t r a c tWe describe an animated, conversational computer agent designed to promote antipsychotic medication adherence among patients with schizophrenia. In addition to medication adherence, the agent also promotes physical activity and system usage, and includes verbal and nonverbal behavior designed to foster a therapeutic alliance with patients. We discuss special considerations in designing interventions for this patient population, and challenges in developing and evaluating conversational agents in the mental health domain. Results from a pilot evaluation study of the agent indicate that it is accepted and effective.

A Post Publication Review of " A Review and Comparative Analysis of Security Risks and Safety Measures of Mobile Health Apps"

“…However, it was, and is, beyond the scope of our investigation to suggest how our general recommendations could be modified for, or implemented by, specific groups of users. In other work, the second author has grappled with issues related to social media and social networks, such as adding friends and becoming a follower, for vulnerable populations (Ruppert, Richards, Arnold, Riches, & Parmenter, 2010) and the (in)appropriate design and use of virtual characters as buddies or companions for those with psychosis, as in the work by Bickmore, Puskar, Schlenk, Pfeifer, and Sereika (2010).…”

Maintaining Continuity in Longitudinal, Multi-method Health Interventions Using Virtual Agents: The Case of Breastfeeding Promotion

“…Many of the longitudinal applications have been in the health domain [5,6,7], including interventions for women's preconception health [5], but also in gameplaying and education [8]. Studies have explored methods for maintaining longitudinal engagement [23], and assessing the sense of continuity when an agent changes form or moves from one body to another [24].…”

Modeling the user state for context-aware spoken interaction in ambient assisted living

“…Emotions affect the explicit message conveyed during the interaction and is frequently mentioned in the literature as the most important factor in establishing a working alliance in AAL applications [20,22]. They change people's voices, facial expressions, gestures, and speech speed; this is a phenomenon addressed as emotional coloring [1].…”

“…The chat functionality extends this goal by means of personalized forms related to educational hints explaining details of their illness (e.g., how the respiratory system works and what are the consequences of their treatment so that they can better face them). The medication adherence functionality emulates previous works [5,22] to remind patients to take all their medications as prescribed in the medical profile Finally, the pharmacies functionality is based on dynamic information automatically provided by the system and related to the current location of the terminal and the daily updated list of pharmacies on duty.…”

“…During the last two decades, these interfaces have been increasingly used in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) providing services such as interviews [55,117], counseling [57,70], chronic symptoms monitoring [23,56,97,102], medication prescription assistance and adherence [5,22], changing dietary behavior [44], promoting physical activity [51,120], helping cigarette smokers quit [124], speech therapy [131], and prognosis and diagnosis using different techniques [60,88].…”