The HOMEY project : a telemedicine service for hypertensive patients

This paper deals with the opportunities and challenges of "intelligent dialogue" technologies in the context of medical applications and, more specifically, home care. The system focuses on an automated, telephone-based home monitoring service for chronic hypertensive patients. A remarkable point in the development of systems that are going to communicate with patients is the promotion of compliant behaviors. In the case of hypertension, we refer to the compliance with the prescribed treatment. To this concern, a number of cognitive theories have been recently proposed to account for the willingness to change our own behavior, that is more and more considered the key issue for disease prevention. In our system, the dialogue is personalized according to these theories, taking into account the patient's actual condition and the clinical practice guidelines on hypertension management. The system has been tested through a clinical trial involving patients from two Italian hospitals. Results show a blood pressure decrease in the group of patients exploiting the Homey service.