Conversational Agents in Healthcare: A Variability Perspective

May, Richard; Denecke, Kerstin (7 February 2024). Conversational Agents in Healthcare: A Variability Perspective In: VaMoS 2024: 18th International Working Conference on Variability Modelling of Software-Intensive Systems (pp. 123-128). New York, NY, USA: ACM 10.1145/3634713.3634717

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Conversational agents in healthcare are gaining popularity, for example, in the context of eliciting medical histories. Furthermore, due to the growing diversity of use cases and stakeholders, they are becoming increasingly configurable and are often based on variability mechanisms. In this paper, we present a high-level perspective on typical variability aspects and describe common challenges based on our research and practical experience in developing and evaluating conversational agents in the healthcare domain. We introduce variability aspects that are classified into technology-related (e.g., intelligence framework, input/output mode) and user-related aspects (e.g., careflow integration, health literacy). Moreover, these aspects are described in a case study on the Digital Medical Interview Assistant (DMIA) for radiology. We highlight main challenges that arise in the context of evolution, verification, input processing, privacy and security compliance, as well as ethical considerations. Our findings are intended to help developers, researchers, and healthcare professionals understand the importance and impact of configurability and to spur further discussions on variability aspects of conversational agents.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Division/Institute:	School of Engineering and Computer Science > Institute for Patient-centered Digital Health School of Engineering and Computer Science > Institute for Patient-centered Digital Health > AI for Health School of Engineering and Computer Science
Name:	May, Richard and Denecke, Kerstin0000-0001-6691-396X
Subjects:	Q Science > Q Science (General) R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
ISBN:	9798400708770
Publisher:	ACM
Language:	English
Submitter:	Kerstin Denecke
Date Deposited:	13 Feb 2024 16:20
Last Modified:	13 Feb 2024 16:20
Publisher DOI:	10.1145/3634713.3634717
Related URLs:	Organisation
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.21230
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/21230