Co-designing Strategies to Provide Telecare Through an Intelligent Assistant for Caregivers of Elderly Individuals

Abstract

Worldwide, the number of people who are over 60 is growing more than any other age group. In the scenario of this research, a mediumsized city in Brazil, elderlies with Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases can have home care services. However, the healthcare professionals who assist these patients regularly face challenges in the visits, such as persistent fear of violence in certain areas. This research proposes the use of Intelligent Conversational Agents as a tool for supporting Telecare practices and tame these challenges. Our literature review, however, has demonstrated that previous works did not follow a methodology to promote a co-design of these agents in a scenario such as ours. There is also a lack of works that balance technological and social issues with non-technological experts in the design process (conceptualization, dialogues elaboration, intelligent agent goals and evaluation). We, thus, have performed a study following a qualitative methodology with the participation of health professionals. The first step aimed to raise the context, dialogues, and objectives of the agent. The second step, using observational and interviewing in a controlled environment, aimed to determine and evaluate the design goals, usefulness, compatibility with the reality, and find out additional requirements to aid the development of an Intelligent Conversational Agent. Results have led us to propose the agent MarIANA (Maria Intelligent conversAtioNal Agent). Therefore, it will act to prevent the clinical complications of these older adults suffering from Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases pointed as a critical matter in a recent work conducted in the city of the scenario of this research.