A multimodal conversational coach for active ageing based on sentient computing and m‐health

As life expectancy increases, it has become more necessary to find ways to support healthy ageing. A number of active ageing initiatives are being developed nowadays to foster healthy habits in the population. This paper presents our contribution to these initiatives in the form of a multimodal conversational coach that acts as a coach for physical activities. The agent can be developed as an Android app running on smartphones and coupled with cheap widely available sport sensors in order to provide meaningful coaching. It can be employed to prepare exercise sessions, provide feedback during the sessions, and discuss the results after the exercise. It incorporates an affective component that informs dynamic user models to produce adaptive interaction strategies.

[1]  J. Miranda,et al.  Addressing healthy aging populations in developing countries: unlocking the opportunity of eHealth and mHealth , 2014, Emerging Themes in Epidemiology.

[2]  Sabine Payr Closing and closure in human-companion interactions: Analyzing video data from a field study , 2010, 19th International Symposium in Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

[3]  Ramesh Farzanfar,et al.  Telephone-linked care for physical activity: A qualitative evaluation of the use patterns of an information technology program for patients , 2005, J. Biomed. Informatics.

[4]  Michael F. McTear,et al.  Automated Phone Capture of Diabetes Patients Readings with Consultant Monitoring via the Web , 2008, 15th Annual IEEE International Conference and Workshop on the Engineering of Computer Based Systems (ecbs 2008).

[5]  Nervo Verdezoto,et al.  Beyond self-monitoring: understanding non-functional aspects of home-based healthcare technology , 2013, UbiComp.

[6]  Sean Jackson Eads Voice of the Machine , 2015 .

[7]  Ching-Ju Chiu,et al.  Understanding Older Adult's Technology Adoption and Withdrawal for Elderly Care and Education: Mixed Method Analysis from National Survey , 2017, Journal of medical Internet research.

[8]  R. Bevilacqua,et al.  Advanced technology care innovation for older people in Italy: necessity and opportunity to promote health and wellbeing. , 2014, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.

[9]  Timothy W. Bickmore,et al.  Maintaining reality: Relational agents for antipsychotic medication adherence , 2010, Interact. Comput..

[10]  Jessica A. Chen,et al.  Conversational agents in healthcare: a systematic review , 2018, J. Am. Medical Informatics Assoc..

[11]  Justin Richards,et al.  Remote and web 2.0 interventions for promoting physical activity. , 2013, The Cochrane database of systematic reviews.

[12]  Timothy W. Bickmore,et al.  A reusable framework for health counseling dialogue systems based on a behavioral medicine ontology , 2011, J. Biomed. Informatics.

[13]  Rudolf W. H. M. Ponds,et al.  “Keep your brain fit!” Effectiveness of a psychoeducational intervention on cognitive functioning in healthy adults: A randomised controlled trial , 2017, Neuropsychological rehabilitation.

[14]  Steve J. Young,et al.  Cognitive User Interfaces , 2010, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[15]  Bijan Najafi,et al.  New and Future Directions in Integrative Medicine Research Methods with a Focus on Aging Populations: A Review , 2015, Gerontology.

[16]  Eue-Hun Lee,et al.  Consumer choice of on-demand mHealth app services: Context and contents values using structural equation modeling , 2017, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[17]  Silke van Dyk,et al.  The Many Meanings of “Active Ageing”. Confronting Public Discourse with Older People’s Stories , 2013 .

[18]  Chris Rissel,et al.  Health coaching and pedometers to enhance physical activity and prevent falls in community-dwelling people aged 60 years and over: study protocol for the Coaching for Healthy AGEing (CHAnGE) cluster randomised controlled trial , 2016, BMJ Open.

[19]  Gary Geunbae Lee,et al.  Natural Language Dialog Systems and Intelligent Assistants , 2015, Springer International Publishing.

[20]  I. Laher,et al.  Exercise and the Cardiovascular System , 2012, Cardiology research and practice.

[21]  David Griol,et al.  The Conversational Interface , 2016 .

[22]  David Griol,et al.  The Conversational Interface: Talking to Smart Devices , 2016 .

[23]  Dušan Hamar,et al.  Physical Activity in Elderly , 2015, European journal of translational myology.

[24]  Ana Paiva,et al.  Modelling Empathy in Social Robotic Companions , 2011, UMAP Workshops.

[25]  K. Hone Usability measurement for speech systems : SASSI revisited , 2014 .

[26]  Gerhard Rigoll,et al.  The Robot ALIAS as a Database for Health Monitoring for Elderly People , 2014 .

[27]  C. Sidner,et al.  Automated interventions for multiple health behaviors using conversational agents. , 2013, Patient education and counseling.

[28]  Ramón López-Cózar,et al.  A domain-independent statistical methodology for dialog management in spoken dialog systems , 2014, Comput. Speech Lang..

[29]  George Samaras,et al.  ICT services for active ageing and independent living: identification and assessment. , 2016, Healthcare technology letters.

[30]  Sebastian Möller,et al.  Reliable Evaluation of Multimodal Dialogue Systems , 2009, HCI.

[31]  Christos Lionis,et al.  Prevention in the elderly: A necessary priority for general practitioners , 2017, The European journal of general practice.

[32]  Josep Blat,et al.  Older people’s production and appropriation of digital videos: an ethnographic study , 2017, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[33]  Michael Burmester,et al.  AttrakDiff: Ein Fragebogen zur Messung wahrgenommener hedonischer und pragmatischer Qualität , 2003, MuC.

[34]  Sebastian Möller,et al.  Measuring the Quality of Service and Quality of Experience of multimodal human–machine interaction , 2012, Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces.

[35]  Hilkka Soininen,et al.  Healthy Ageing Through Internet Counselling in the Elderly: the HATICE randomised controlled trial for the prevention of cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairment , 2016, Alzheimer's & Dementia.

[36]  W. Keijser,et al.  DG connect funded projects on information and communication technologies (ICT) for old age people: Beyond Silos, CareWell and SmartCare , 2016, The journal of nutrition, health & aging.

[37]  E. Poole HCI and mobile health interventions , 2013, Translational behavioral medicine.

[38]  Hansjörg Hofmann,et al.  Evaluation of In-Car SDS Notification Concepts for Incoming Proactive Events , 2014, IWSDS.

[39]  C. Dolea,et al.  World Health Organization , 1949, International Organization.

[40]  J. Fleg,et al.  Aerobic exercise in the elderly: a key to successful aging. , 2012, Discovery medicine.

[41]  H. Zeeb,et al.  Effectiveness of eHealth interventions for the promotion of physical activity in older adults: A systematic review. , 2018, Preventive medicine.

[42]  E. Hudlicka Virtual training and coaching of health behavior: example from mindfulness meditation training. , 2013, Patient education and counseling.

[43]  Sebastian Möller,et al.  Memo: towards automatic usability evaluation of spoken dialogue services by user error simulations , 2006, INTERSPEECH.

[44]  Rostislava Dimitrova Growth in the intersection of eHealth and active and healthy ageing. , 2013, Technology and health care : official journal of the European Society for Engineering and Medicine.

[45]  Theodoros N. Arvanitis,et al.  E-health for active ageing; A systematic review. , 2018, Maturitas.

[46]  Elisabete Pinto Blood pressure and ageing , 2007, Postgraduate Medical Journal.

[47]  Toni Giorgino,et al.  Automated Spoken Dialog System for Hypertensive Patient Home Management , 2004 .

[48]  Robert Savage,et al.  SOPRANO - An Ambient Assisted Living System for Supporting Older People at Home , 2009, ICOST.

[49]  Marc Cavazza,et al.  How was your day?: a companion ECA , 2010, AAMAS.

[50]  James R. Lewis The Voice in the Machine: Building Computers That Understand Speech , 2012, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[51]  A. Kalache,et al.  Active ageing: a policy framework. , 2003, Advances in gerontology = Uspekhi gerontologii.

[52]  A. Rutjes,et al.  Computerised cognition-based interventions for maintaining cognitive function in cognitively healthy people in midlife , 2016 .

[53]  Ronald L Gellish,et al.  Longitudinal modeling of the relationship between age and maximal heart rate. , 2007, Medicine and science in sports and exercise.

[54]  Rodolphe Bourret,et al.  An integrated approach to telemonitoring noncommunicable diseases: best practice from the European innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing. , 2013, World hospitals and health services : the official journal of the International Hospital Federation.

[55]  J. Foster,et al.  Topical anaesthesia for needle-related pain in newborn infants. , 2017, The Cochrane database of systematic reviews.

[56]  Hilkka Soininen,et al.  Development and Validation of an Interactive Internet Platform for Older People: The Healthy Ageing Through Internet Counselling in the Elderly Study. , 2017, Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association.

[57]  Anne Kärki,et al.  Ethicted (evaluation process model to improve personalised ICT services for independent living and active ageing)--future scenario. , 2013, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[58]  Nervo Verdezoto,et al.  MediFrame: A Tablet Application to Plan, Inform, Remind and Sustain Older Adults' Medication Intake , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics.

[59]  Andreas Maercker,et al.  E-health interventions for depression, anxiety disorders, dementia, and other disorders in old age: A review , 2011 .

[60]  Sandeep K. Sood,et al.  A comprehensive health assessment framework to facilitate IoT-assisted smart workouts: A predictive healthcare perspective , 2017, Comput. Ind..

[61]  Nathanael Chambers,et al.  Chester: Towards a personal medication advisor , 2006, J. Biomed. Informatics.

[62]  Ramón López-Cózar,et al.  Relations between de-facto criteria in the evaluation of a spoken dialogue system , 2008, Speech Commun..

[63]  José Manuel Ferrández,et al.  Intelligent monitoring for people assistance and safety , 2014, Expert Syst. J. Knowl. Eng..

[64]  Timothy Bickmore,et al.  Health dialog systems for patients and consumers , 2006, J. Biomed. Informatics.

[65]  Dirk Heylen,et al.  Non-verbal Persuasion and Communication in an Affective Agent , 2011 .