Date of Award

Fall 2019

Degree Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Philosophy, PhD

Program

Center for Information Systems and Technology

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Samir Chatterjee

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Tamir Bechor

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Brian Hilton

Terms of Use & License Information

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Rights Information

© 2019 Sanjoy Moulik

Keywords

Chatbot, Conversational Agent, Heart Failure, Home Monitoring

Subject Categories

Health Information Technology

Abstract

There is an exceptionally high rate of readmissions and rehospitalizations for patients suffering from chronic diseases especially Heart Failure. Best efforts to address this alarming problem from the Care giver community have fallen short due to a number of factors most notably resource constraints like shortage of trained clinical staff, and money. Using a Design Science Research framework, this work designed and evaluated "DIL", a Conversational Agent that complements the work of clinicians in achieving the desired behavioral and clinical outcomes. The aim is to provide the hospital with an information system that could bridge the current gap in care that occurs when the patient transitions from the hospital environment to the home environment. The expected contribution is to produce a novel artifact and demonstrate the efficacy and utility of the tool to assist patients with heart failure in improving their self-care. The study conclusions were extremely positive. DIL scored high on User engagement and satisfaction. Every patient felt significantly more positive after their interaction with DIL during the trial period, and had a positive outlook on their quality of life going forward. The patients in the trial found DIL to be helpful in keeping them motivated to follow a healthy lifestyle by controlling their diet, and adhering to clinical guidelines of regular exercise, and taking medications on a timely manner. Given the extremely positive experience of the patients, there is definitely room for such an IT artifact in supporting patients as they make the transition from hospital to the home setting.

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