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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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ABSTRACT: Health behavior drives 70% of the cost in the US healthcare system and
is responsible for 55% of deaths. Lifestyle health behavior, such as
tobacco use and poor diet and inactivity, are among the leading cost
drivers and causes of death, but health behavior continues to be a
significant cost driver even after the healthcare system gets involved.
Patients often do not show up for appointments or show up unprepared,
and, on average, only half of medications are taken as prescribed.
In this talk I will describe a vision for an automated persistent,
proactive and personified “health advocate” that functions as a
self-care coach for preventive medicine and a mediator for interactions
with the healthcare system. I’ll present several systems that my lab
has produced or have in development that work towards this vision,
spanning wellness promotion to self-care education at hospital
discharge to at-home medication adherence promotion. I’ll discuss the
dialogue engines and animated conversational agent technology
underlying these systems, as well as applications in various stages of
clinical trial, and experiences conducting R&D in the healthcare
(and NIH) environment.
The applications include exercise promotion for geriatrics patients (in
clinical trial in the Geriatrics Clinic at Boston Medical Center) and
Spanish-speaking older Latino adults (in clinical trial at Stanford
Medical), antipsychotic medication adherence for adults with
schizophrenia (completed trial with the University of Pittsburgh School
of Nursing), and hospital bedside patient education (in clinical trial
at Boston Medical Center).
BIO: Timothy Bickmore is an Assistant Professor in the College of Computer
and Information Science at Northeastern University. The focus of his
research is on the development and evaluation of computer agents that
emulate face-to-face interactions between health providers and patients
for use in health education and health behavior change interventions,
with a particular focus on the emotional and relational aspects of
these interactions. Prior to Northeastern, he spent two years as an
Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of
Medicine. Timothy received his Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT.
