To what scale are conversational agents used by top-funded companies offering digital mental health services for depression?
ISBN
978-989-758-490-9
Type
book section
Date Issued
2021-02-11
Author(s)
Alattas, Aishah
;
Teepe, Gisbert
;
Leidenberger, Konstantin
;
;
Tudor Car, Lorainne
;
Salamanca-Sanabria, Alicia
;
Editor(s)
Pesquita, Cátia
Fred, Ana
Gamboa, Hugo
Abstract
There is strong support in the literature for the use of conversational agents (CAs) in digital mental healthcare along with a recent increase in funding within digital mental health, indicating the fast growth of the industry. However, it is unknown to what extent CAs are leveraged in these digital interventions for depression. The aim of this study is to therefore explore the scale of CA use in top-funded digital mental health companies targeting depression and describe what purposes they are used for. Companies were identified through searching venture capital databases and screened for the presence and purpose of use of CAs in their interventions for depression. It was found that only 7 out of the 29 top-funded companies used a CA in their intervention. The most common purpose of CA use was education, followed by assistance, training and onboarding. None of the interventions used CAs for elderly assistance, diagnosis or prevention. These results indicate that the industry uptake of CAs in digital interventions for depression within top-funded companies is low. Future work can look into using CAs in areas which this analysis found they are not currently used such as in tailoring to different target populations and in preventing depression.
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
801
End page
808
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
261817
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
Alattas et al 2021 Digital Mental Health CAs.pdf
Size
499.65 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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