Generation of Multi-Party Dialogues among Embodied Conversational Agents to Promote Active Living and Healthy Diet for Subjects Suffering from Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic condition that is highly prevalent in the geriatric population. Self-management plays a key role in the management of this condition. Leading an active lifestyle and having a healthy meal are cornerstones in managing this condition. Now with the advancement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), continuous and proactive care from the affected individual’s side is possible. A change in the individual’s behaviour would be beneficial in pursuing physical activity and adopting a healthy diet. This paper focuses on providing a dialogue based virtual health coaching through multiple Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs), using strategies such as Motivational Interviewing (MI), Theories of Behaviour Change and Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs). The dialogues are constructed to induce a behaviour change and promote motivation in the affected subjects to work on improving their physical activity and diet plan.

[1]  L. D. de Groot,et al.  Determinants of Behaviour Change in a Multi-Component Telemonitoring Intervention for Community-Dwelling Older Adults , 2018, Nutrients.

[2]  Raju P Sapkota,et al.  Barriers to diabetes awareness and self-help are influenced by people's demographics: perspectives of South Asians with type 2 diabetes , 2020, Ethnicity & health.

[3]  R. Calabró,et al.  Moving towards novel multidisciplinary approaches for improving elderly quality of life: The emerging role of telemedicine in Sicily , 2019, Journal of telemedicine and telecare.

[4]  E. A. Locke,et al.  Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. A 35-year odyssey. , 2002, The American psychologist.

[5]  Charles Abraham,et al.  THE BEHAVIOR CHANGE TECHNIQUE TAXONOMY (V1) OF 93 HIERARCHICALLY-CLUSTERED TECHNIQUES: TESTING RELIABILITY OF THE TAXONOMY , 2013 .

[6]  Associations between barriers to self-care and diabetes complications among patients with type 2 diabetes. , 2018, Diabetes research and clinical practice.

[7]  M. Clarke,et al.  Monitoring activities of daily living of the elderly and the potential for its use in telecare and telehealth: a review. , 2013, Telemedicine journal and e-health : the official journal of the American Telemedicine Association.

[8]  Naphtali Rishe,et al.  Toward conducting motivational interviewing with an on-demand clinician avatar for tailored health behavior change interventions , 2011, 2011 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth) and Workshops.

[9]  Colleen M. Seifert,et al.  Enhancing Intrinsic Motivation in Health Promotion and Wellness , 2012, American journal of health promotion : AJHP.

[10]  Majid A. Al-Taee,et al.  Web-of-Things inspired e-Health platform for integrated diabetes care management , 2013, 2013 IEEE Jordan Conference on Applied Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (AEECT).

[11]  Pierre Jouvelot,et al.  Towards attention monitoring of older adults with cognitive impairment during interaction with an embodied conversational agent , 2015, 2015 3rd IEEE VR International Workshop on Virtual and Augmented Assistive Technology (VAAT).

[12]  C. Kuziemsky,et al.  Development of a Path to Home Mobile App for the Geriatric Rehabilitation Program at Bruyère Continuing Care: Protocol for User-Centered Design and Feasibility Testing Studies , 2018, JMIR research protocols.

[13]  Leonard Joseph Henry,et al.  Role of Exercise in the Management of Diabetes Mellitus: the Global Scenario , 2013, PloS one.

[14]  W A Fisher,et al.  Changing AIDS-risk behavior. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[15]  W. Rakowski,et al.  Stages of change and decisional balance for 12 problem behaviors. , 1994, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[16]  M. Becker,et al.  The Health Belief Model: A Decade Later , 1984, Health education quarterly.

[17]  G. Lazzi,et al.  The Promise of Mobile Technologies for the Health Care System in the Developing World: A Systematic Review , 2019, IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering.

[18]  Samuel S. Silva,et al.  Geriatric Helper: An mHealth Application to Support Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment , 2018, Sensors.

[19]  Alison Pease,et al.  A Dialogue Game for Multi-Party Goal-Setting in Health Coaching , 2018, COMMA.

[20]  W. D’hoore,et al.  Patient empowerment in theory and practice: polysemy or cacophony? , 2007, Patient education and counseling.

[21]  W. Hardeman,et al.  Which Behavior Change Techniques are Associated with Changes in Physical Activity, Diet and Body Mass Index in People with Recently Diagnosed Diabetes? , 2014, Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

[22]  Sweta Sneha,et al.  How IT and adequate governance could help to cope with healthcare challenges , 2014 .

[23]  A. L. Baylor.  Promoting motivation with virtual agents and avatars: role of visual presence and appearance , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[24]  Catherine Pelachaud,et al.  Is Two Better than One?: Effects of Multiple Agents on User Persuasion , 2018, IVA.

[25]  Nava A. Shaked,et al.  Avatars and virtual agents – relationship interfaces for the elderly , 2017, Healthcare technology letters.

[26]  Ben S. Gerber,et al.  Towards Building a Virtual Assistant Health Coach , 2018, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI).

[27]  P. Brunetti,et al.  Validation of a counseling strategy to promote the adoption and the maintenance of physical activity by type 2 diabetic subjects. , 2003, Diabetes care.

[28]  A. Bandura.  Social cognitive theory of self-regulation☆ , 1991 .

[29]  Satoshi Nakamura,et al.  Embodied conversational agents for multimodal automated social skills training in people with autism spectrum disorders , 2017, PloS one.

[30]  Huber Nieto-Chaupis,et al.  Proposal of a telecare system for monitoring glucose anomalous behavior in type-2 diabetes patients , 2017, 2017 CHILEAN Conference on Electrical, Electronics Engineering, Information and Communication Technologies (CHILECON).

[31]  C. Abraham,et al.  The Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy (v1) of 93 Hierarchically Clustered Techniques: Building an International Consensus for the Reporting of Behavior Change Interventions , 2013, Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

[32]  Karin Kraft,et al.  [Type-2 diabetes]. , 2010, MMW Fortschritte der Medizin.

[33]  Dirk Heylen,et al.  Council of Coaches - A Novel Holistic Behavior Change Coaching Approach , 2018, ICT4AWE.

[34]  S. Rössner,et al.  Obesity management: what brings success? , 2013, Therapeutic advances in gastroenterology.

[35]  Martijn H. Vastenburg,et al.  Flowie: A persuasive virtual coach to motivate elderly individuals to walk , 2009, 2009 3rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare.

[36]  María Teresa Arredondo,et al.  A mobile feedback system for integrated E-health platforms to improve self-care and compliance of diabetes mellitus patients , 2011, 2011 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[37]  C. Pelachaud,et al.  Automating the Production of Communicative Gestures in Embodied Characters , 2018, Front. Psychol..