A RCT to Reduce Cardiopulmonary Re-hospitalizations
This five-year, NIH/NHLBI-funded project, in collaboration with Boston Medical Center, has developed procedures and technologies for educating hospital patients about their conditions and post-discharge self-care, medications, and follow-up appointments, in an effort to reduce re-hospitalizations due to poor patient communication and patient non-compliance. We have developed a conversational virtual nurse agent that conducts a bedside dialogue with patients immediately prior to hospital discharge. This intervention was compared with a standard-of-care control condition in a randomized clinical trial involving 750 patients being discharged from Boston Medical Center. [Quicktime VIDEO]
In a follow-on project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality ("Virtual Patient Advocate to Reduce Adverse Drug Events"), we have developed an intervention that follows patients home from the hospital through to their first visit with their Primary Care Physician, using a web-based virtual nurse. [DEMO]
Publications:
- Agent-User Concordance and Satisfaction with a Virtual Hospital Discharge Nurse.
Intelligent Virtual Agents conference (IVA) (2014)
Zhou, S., Bickmore, T., Jack, B. PDF - Automated Promotion of Technology Acceptance by Clinicians Using Relational Agents.
Intelligent Virtual Agents conference(IVA) (2013) Bickmore, T., Vardoulakis, L., Jack, B., Paasche-Orlow, M. PDF - Longitudinal Remote Follow-Up by Intelligent Conversational Agents for Post-Hospitalization Care.
AAAI Spring Symposium on AI in Health Communication.
Pfeifer, L, Bickmore, T (to appear) PDF - Usability of Conversational Agents by Patients with Inadequate Health Literacy: Evidence from Two Clinical Trials.
Journal of Health Communication 15, 197-210.
Bickmore, T, Pfeifer, L, Byron, D, Forsythe, S, Henault, L, Jack, B, Silliman, R, Paasche-Orlow, M (2010) PDF - Response to a Relational Agent by Hospital Patients with Depressive Symptoms.
Interacting with Computers special issue on Mental Health 22(4), 289-298.
Bickmore, T, Mitchell, S, Jack, B, Paasche-Orlow, M, Pfeifer, L, ODonnell, J (2010). PDF - Taking the Time to Care: Empowering Low Health Literacy Hospital Patients with Virtual Nurse Agents
Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Boston, MA.
Bickmore, T., Pfeifer, L., and Jack, B. (2009) PDF - Using Computer Agents to Explain Medical Documents to Patients with Low Health Literacy.
Patient Education and Counseling 75(3): 315-320.
Bickmore, T., Pfeifer, L., and Paasche-Orlow, M. (2009) PDF - Health Document Explanation by Virtual Agents
Intelligent Virtual Agents '07, Paris.
Bickmore, T., Pfeifer, L. and Paasche-Orlow, M. (2007) PDF
Press:
- 10/10 - "Virtual Patient Advocate Could Enhance Health Literacy" Health Leaders [Magazine]
- 11/09 - "Virtual Nurse: Always on Call" Ivanhoe Newswire [TV News]
- 7/09 - "How to Save a Bundle on Hospital Readmissions" Managed Care Journal [Magazine]
- 6/09 - "Taking a bite out of readmissions: Researchers identify strategies to streamline discharges" Today's Hospitalist [Magazine]
- 2/09 - "Project RED: The reengineered hospital discharge program" Boston.com [Online Magazine]
- 2/09 - "Discharge Protocol Cuts Readmissions" Family Practice News [Magazine]
- 3/31/09 - "Improving Patient Safety: Implementing Re-Engineered Hospital Discharges Web Conference" sponsored by AHRQ [Archived Webcast]
- 2/08 - "Implementing Lifelike Animation: Boston Medical Center implements computerized workstation to converse with patients" Advance for Nurses [ Magazine]
- 12/14/07 - Mass High Tech - "Good night, nurse! BMC tests virtual RN for discharges" [Web Link]