The use of a virtual health coach positively engaged patients during exam room downtime, which resulted in an increase in patients communicating with their physician about a health topic that went undiscussed during previous appointments, according to a recent study published in the American Journal of Managed Care.
For the study, researchers surveyed 63 patients who agreed to test out new technology while waiting for their physicians in the exam room. Patients were given tablets equipped with virtual health coaches driven by artificial intelligence and natural language understanding technologies , similar to Apple's Siri. The virtual assistant questioned patients about common health concerns like body weight, alcohol consumption, smoking, stress levels and medication adherence.
Fifty-one percent of survey respondents reported discussing a health topic they selected on the tablet with their physician. Among them, 26 percent said they'd never discussed the subject with the physician previously.
"Patients are accepting of virtual agents and, interestingly, some disclose more to a computer interviewer than to its human counterpart," wrote the study's authors. "Standardized behavioral change and motivational interventions can be built into virtual health coach interactions. The ability to standardize conversations allows challenging and time-consuming interactions to be brief, consistent in quality and scalable. VHCs could ultimately cost less than real providers in specific contexts. Thus, they are an attractive alternative to training physicians to be proficient in effective lifestyle discussions by using motivational interviewing strategies, which has proven to be challenging at best."
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