An empirical study investigating the user acceptance of a virtual conversational agent interface for family health history collection among the geriatric population

Abstract

Critical for the early diagnosis of genetic disorders, a Family Health History (FHx) can be collected in several ways including electronic FHx tools, which aid easy editing and sharing by linking with other information management portals. The user acceptance of such systems is critical, especially among older adults experiencing motor and cognitive issues. This study investigated two types of FHx interfaces, standard and Virtual Conversational Agent (VCA), using 30 young (between 18 and 30) and 24 older participants (over 60). Workload, usability and performance data were collected. Even though participants required less time to complete three of five tasks on the standard interface, the VCA interface performed better in terms of subjective workload and usability. Additionally, 67% of the older adults preferred the VCA interface since it provided context-based guidance during the data collection process. The results from this study have implications for the use of virtual assistants in FHx and other areas of data collection.

Virtual conversational agents versus online forms: Patient experience and preferences for health data collection

“…We aimed to recruit participants who were 18 years or older but made no further specifications for age, gender, race, or education. However, our findings were consistent with previous studies with welleducated and underserved populations (11)(12)(13)(14).…”

“…Our study did not include many older adults (age >60 years; n = 10, 4.9%). Older adults tend to experience greater difficulty navigating online interfaces, and little research has explored their unique experiences and challenges with online health data collection ( 12 ). We are in the process of systematically reviewing the literature about chatbots for health data collection among older adults and evaluating the cognitive load, usability, and ease-of-use of chatbot-delivered health forms among 300 older adults using the platform Prolific.co ( 45 ).…”

“…Chatbots simulate human conversations to provide a data collection experience that is more naturalistic and intuitive than standard forms. Patients have reported positive perceptions of chatbots including ease of use, understandability, and enjoyability (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Some studies have found that chatbots improve user experience by reducing workload and enhancing ease of completing asynchronous surveys at patients' convenience (16).…”

Supporting eating behaviour of community-dwelling older adults: co-design of an embodied conversational agent

“…In addition, compared to real-life coaches, ECAs are always available and can offer support when it matters most: immediately before or after specific behaviour (Brinkman 2016). ECAs have great potential among our target group as well, as earlier studies show high ratings of acceptance, enjoyment and usability of ECAs among older adults Bickmore et al 2013;Ponathil et al 2020;). An example is 'Sylvia', which can be seen in Figure 1 (ter Stal et al 2020).…”

An Investigation of the Usability of a Teleconsent System

“…While there is research on using teleconferencing to complete consent in telemedicine and, more important, user testing of these systems (Khairat et al, 2018), there is no expert evaluation of the usability of these systems in telemedicine where users can often be elderly and may have limited computer literacy. It is important to evaluate healthcare technology for usability issues as they can often lead to errors (Ponathil, Ozkan, Bertrand, Welch, & Madathil, 2018). Previous usability studies have highlighted the need for electronic consent forms to be easy to read and complete by those who may not be expert users of the technology (Chalil Madathil et al, 2013).…”