A Conversational Agent for Promoting Physical Activity among COPD Patients

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is one of the most prevalent diseases in the world, affecting respiratory performance of many people, limiting the airflow and is not fully reversible. It is a clinical syndrome characterized by chronic respiratory symptoms, structural pulmonary abnormalities or impairment of lung function. In order to help people with this disease, we propose an innovative personalized mHealth coaching platform that will address patient preferences and contextual factors - the OnTRACK platform. This platform is composed of a mobile application for patients, a web platform for healthcare professionals - and a conversational agent (or chatbot), named "Higia", which acts as an alternative interface between patients and the platform. This conversational agent includes several of the main functionalities already available in OnTRACK's smartphone app, complementing and extending it. It allows consulting prescription information in a multitude of ways, getting and setting all personal data, inserting physical activity measurements, and obtaining historical data on physical activity and prescriptions, among others. The evaluation of the conversational agent yielded encouraging results, with users reporting being happier, more motivated, dedicated and confident when interacting with the systems using their voice, while allowing the development team to identify topics for improvement.