Authors:
Marco Alfano
1
;
2
;
John Kellett
3
;
Biagio Lenzitti
4
and
Markus Helfert
2
Affiliations:
1
Anghelos Centro Studi sulla Comunicazione, Palermo, Italy
;
2
Lero, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
;
3
Department of Emergency Medicine, Hospital of South West Jutland, Esbjerg, Denmark
;
4
Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università di Palermo, Palermo, Italy
Keyword(s):
Digital Health, Patient Empowerment, Conversational Agent, Tailored Health Communication, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data.
Abstract:
Empowerment is a process through which people acquire the necessary knowledge and self-awareness to understand their conditions and treatment options, make informed choices and self-manage their health conditions in daily life, in collaboration with medical professionals. Conversational Agents in healthcare could play an important role in the process of empowering a person but, so far, they have been seldom been used for this purpose. This paper presents the basic principles and preliminary implementation of a conversational health agent for patient empowerment. It dialogues with the user in a “natural” way, collects health data from heterogeneous sources and provides the user with specific and relevant information. This allows a person/patient to create his/her own opinion on health matters in the most complete and objective way, and, therefore, it facilitates the empowerment process.