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Are conversational agents used at scale by companies offering digital health services for the management and prevention of diabetes?
ISBN
978-989-758-490-9
Type
book section
Date Issued
2021-02-11
Author(s)
Keller, Roman
Yao, Jiali
Teepe, Gisbert
Hartmann, Sven
Lohse, Kim-Morgaine
von Wangenheim, Florian
Müller-Riemenschneider, Falk
Mair, Jacqueline Louise
Editor(s)
Pesquita, Cátia
Fred, Ana
Gamboa, Hugo
Abstract
Successful interventions to prevent and manage type 2 diabetes rely on long-term, day-today decisions which take place outside of clinical settings. In this context, human resources are difficult to scale up, and leveraging Conversational agents (CAs) could be one way to scale up healthcare to tackle the emerging epidemic of type 2 diabetes. The objective of this paper is to assess the degree to which CAs are employed by top-funded digital health companies that target the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes. Companies were identified via two venture capital databases, i.e. Crunchbase Pro and Pitchbook. Two independent reviewers screened results and the final list of companies was validated and revised by three independent digital health experts. The companies' digital services (usually mobile applications) were accessed and reviewed for the utilisation of CAs. To better understand the purpose of identified CAs, relevant publications were identified via PubMed, Google Scholar, ACM Digital Library and on the companies' website. Nine out of 15 companies' digital services were accessible to the authors and only in one case a CA was employed. The uptake of CAs by top-funded digital health companies targeting type-2 diabetes is still low.
Language
English
Keywords
Digital health interventions
conversational agents
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SoM - Business Innovation
Book title
Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2021) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF
Publisher
SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications
Start page
811
End page
816
Event Title
Workshop on Scaling-Up Healthcare with Conversational Agents – Scale-IT-up 2021, 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC)
Event Location
online streaming
Event Date
February 11-13, 2021
Division(s)
Eprints ID
261818