CARDIAC: An Intelligent Conversational Assistant for Chronic Heart Failure Patient Heath Monitoring
George Ferguson, James F. Allen, Lucian Galescu, Jill R. Quinn, Mary D. Swift · 2009
We describe CARDIAC, a prototype for an intelligent con-versational assistant that provides health monitoring for chronic heart failure patients. CARDIAC supports user ini-tiative through its ability to understand natural language and connect it to intention recognition. The natural language interface allows patients to interact with CARDIAC without special training. The system is designed to understand in-formation that arises spontaneously in the course of the interview. If the patient gives more detail than necessary for answering a question, the system updates the user model accordingly. CARDIAC is a first step towards developing cost-effective, customizable, automated in-home conversa-tional assistants that help patients manage their care and monitor their health using natural language.