Islam Ashraful, Chaudhry Beenish Moalla
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 104 East University Avenue, Lafayette, US.
JMIR Hum Factors. 2022 Sep 11. doi: 10.2196/37734.
Relational agents (RAs) have shown effectiveness in various health interventions with and without doctors and hospital facilities. We suggest that in situations such as a pandemic like the COVID-19 when healthcare professionals (HCPs) and facilities are unable to cope with increased demands, RAs can play a major role in ameliorating the situation.
The goal of this research was to seek design validation on a prototypical RA to address healthcare needs of the COVID-19 patients.
Therefore, RAs can deliver health interventions during COVID-19 pandemic, but they have not been well-explored in this domain. To address this gap, a prototypical RA is iteratively designed and developed in collaboration with infected patients (n=21) and two groups of HCPs (n=19 and n=16 respectively) to aid COVID-19 patients at various stages by performing four main tasks: testing guidance, support during self-isolation, handling emergency situations, and promoting post-recovery mental well-being.
A survey with 98 individuals was used to evaluate the usability of the prototype by system usability scale (SUS) and it received an average score of 58.82. Moreover, participants indicated perceived usefulness and acceptability of the system on Likert Scales where 89.65% perceived it to be helpful, 68.97% accepted it as a viable alternative to HCPs.
The prototypical RA received favorable feedback from the participants and they were inclined to accept it as an alternative to HCPs in non-life-threatening scenarios despite the usability rating falling below the acceptable threshold. Based on participants' feedback, we recommend further development of the RA with improved automation and emotional support, ability to provide information, tracking, and specific recommendations.
关系代理（RAs）在有或没有医生及医院设施的各种健康干预中都显示出了有效性。我们认为，在像新冠疫情这样的大流行情况下，当医疗保健专业人员（HCPs）和设施无法应对增加的需求时，关系代理可以在改善这种情况中发挥重要作用。
本研究的目标是寻求对一个原型关系代理进行设计验证，以满足新冠患者的医疗需求。
因此，关系代理可以在新冠疫情期间提供健康干预，但在这一领域尚未得到充分探索。为了填补这一空白，与感染患者（n = 21）和两组医疗保健专业人员（分别为n = 19和n = 16）合作，迭代设计并开发了一个原型关系代理，通过执行四项主要任务来帮助处于不同阶段的新冠患者：检测指导、自我隔离期间的支持、处理紧急情况以及促进康复后的心理健康。
通过系统可用性量表（SUS）对98名个体进行了调查，以评估该原型的可用性，其平均得分为58.82。此外，参与者在李克特量表上表明了对该系统的感知有用性和可接受性，其中89.65%的人认为它有帮助，68.97%的人将其接受为医疗保健专业人员的可行替代方案。
该原型关系代理得到了参与者的积极反馈，尽管可用性评级低于可接受阈值，但他们倾向于在非危及生命的情况下将其作为医疗保健专业人员的替代方案接受。基于参与者的反馈，我们建议进一步开发关系代理，提高自动化和情感支持、提供信息、跟踪以及具体建议的能力。
