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Conference articles · 2024

UMLS-Based Approach for Developing VoiS: Voice-Activated Conversational Agent for Self-Management of Multiple Chronic Conditions

Min Sook Park, Hyunkyoung Oh, Jake Luo, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed, Paramita Basak Upama, Adib Ahmed Anik, Shiyu Tian, Masud Rabbani

Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference

Abstract

This abstract proposes a system design for an ontology-based conversational agent (CA) for the self-management of chronic conditions. In the proposed voice-activated self-monitoring support (VoiS) application, the research team plans to integrate the Unified Medical Language System to make the agent better understand lay terms from patients and properly map those terms to medical concepts. This automated process is expected to improve the user experience in two folds: a) promote the quality of communication between the patients and health providers and b) make the VoiS app more responsive to user inputs, overcoming accepting only constrained user inputs (e.g., multiple choice of utterance). Fig. 1 illustrates the overview of the system architecture of VoiS. This conversational agents design shows how established ontology can be leveraged in a way of improving the user experience of health consumers.

Publication details

Category
Conference articles
Authors & affiliations
  1. Min Sook ParkSchool of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
  2. Hyunkyoung OhSchool of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
  3. Jake LuoZilber College of Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
  4. Sheikh Iqbal AhamedDepartment of Computer Science, Ubicomp Lab, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
  5. Paramita Basak UpamaDepartment of Computer Science, Ubicomp Lab, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
  6. Adib Ahmed AnikDepartment of Computer Science, Ubicomp Lab, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
  7. Shiyu TianDepartment of Computer Science, Ubicomp Lab, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
  8. Masud RabbaniDepartment of Computer Science, Ubicomp Lab, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
Venue
Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference
Published
January 23, 2024
Cite this work

Min Sook Park, Hyunkyoung Oh, Jake Luo, Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed, Paramita Basak Upama, Adib Ahmed Anik, Shiyu Tian, Masud Rabbani. “UMLS-Based Approach for Developing VoiS: Voice-Activated Conversational Agent for Self-Management of Multiple Chronic Conditions”. Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference. (2024). https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2023.1251.

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Plain-language summary

Research takeaway

The proposed VoiS design uses UMLS to map patients' everyday language to medical concepts within a voice assistant for chronic condition self-management. The intended benefit is more flexible conversation and clearer patient-provider communication.

Research topics

  • medical ontologies
  • health informatics
  • conversational agents
  • mHealth
  • system design
  • UMLS
  • chronic disease self-management
  • mobile health

Research context

Explore the connected research focus

Mobile-health AI Conversational AI & VoiS