Posts Tagged ‘healthcare’

15 Jan

A Group-Based Mobile Application to Increase Adherence in Exercise and Nutrition Programs: A Factorial Design Feasibility Study

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: , , .

Novel methods of promoting self-monitoring and social support are needed to ensure long-term maintenance of behavior change. In this paper, we directly investigate the effects of group support in an exercise and nutrition program delivered by an mHealth application called Fittle.

Our first specific study aim was to explore whether social support improved adherence in wellness programs. Our second specific study aim was to assess whether media types (ePaper vs mobile) were associated with different levels of compliance and adherence to wellness programs. The third aim was to assess whether the use of an mHealth application led to positive changes to participants’ eating behavior, physical activity, and stress level, compared to traditional paper-based programs.

Conclusions: The team-based Fittle app is an acceptable and feasible wellness behavior change intervention and a full randomized controlled trial to investigate the efficacy of such an intervention is warranted.

A Group-Based Mobile Application to Increase Adherence in Exercise and Nutrition Programs: A Factorial Design Feasibility Study

by Honglu Du, Anusha Venkatakrishnan, Michael Youngblood, Ashwin Ram, Peter Pirolli

Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) mHealth uHealth, 4(1), 2016.
mhealth.jmir.org/2016/1/e4/

8 Jul

Augmented Social Cognition for Consumer Health and Wellness

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Agents, Health & Wellness, Talks, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: , , .

In a recent Wall Street Journal essay, Marc Andreessen wrote: “Software is eating the world. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software. Healthcare and education are next up for fundamental software-based transformation.”

What is the impending disruption in healthcare, and what new technologies are driving it? I argue that the problem is not healthcare but health: creating new consumer-centric approaches to health and wellness that increase engagement, improve health literacy and promote behavior change.

The web is evolving from information (portals) to interaction (social/mobile) to influence: shaping attitudes and behaviors. This creates a unique opportunity to address the problem of consumer health and wellness. But, to do this effectively requires a new kind of technology: user modeling. It also requires an innovation methodology that is fundamentally about people, not technology.

At PARC, our research in Augmented Social Cognition is centered around the confluence of three technologies: social, mobile, and user modeling. I discuss these technologies and explain how we leverage artificial Intelligence (AI) and case-based reasoning (CBR) techniques to model users and create effective and sustainable behavior change.

Invited talk at CBR-2013 Industry Day, Saratoga Springs, NY, July 8, 2013.
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17 Jun

From Dr Google, to Dr Facebook, and beyond…

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Opinion, Talks, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: , , .

I recently appeared on the ABC Health Report radio program.

Joel Werner: Do you ever go online to search for symptoms that you’re experiencing? I do it all the time, and it’s a trend that has picked up the nickname ‘Dr Google’. For Ashwin Ram, Dr Google is just one step on the path to future healthcare…

4 Jun

The Intelligent Web: Shaping Behavior at the Intersection of Health, Wealth, & Choice

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Education, Health & Wellness, Opinion, Talks, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: , , , , .

The web is evolving from information (portals) to interaction (social/mobile). The next stage will be about influence: shaping attitudes and behaviors. To do this effectively requires a new kind of technology: user modeling. It also requires an innovation methodology that is fundamentally about people, not technology.

I discuss three big ideas in innovation for consumer engagement and behavior change, and illustrate using examples from healthcare, education, and financial services.
Invited keynote at Amplify: Business Innovation and Thought Leadership, June 2013, Australia.

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16 Apr

The Patient Portal Conundrum

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Opinion, Talks, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: .

Recent “Meaningful Use” legislation requires healthcare providers to (Stage 1) capture patient information in electronic health records, (Stage 2) create portals to enable online access for patients and providers, and (Stage 3) demonstrate improved quality of care. All of which sounds like a great idea…but will it work?
 
At PARC we believe in anthropologist Margaret Mead‘s driving principle: “What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things.” We know consumers access healthcare information online, but what do they actually do when they’re there?
 
NPR Marketplace cites a report by healthcare research firm National Research indicating 96% of the nearly 23,000 consumers it surveyed recently use Facebook to gather information about health care, with 28% using YouTube and 22% using Twitter. In fact, social media has been called “the biggest threat to healthcare portals like WebMD”.
 
If consumers don’t use healthcare portals, how will we get “meaningful use” by creating them? I will attempt to answer this question (hint: think Augmented Social Cognition) but I fully expect to raise a lot more questions in the process. Come ready to ask and argue, and maybe we will find answers together.
 
Invited talk at Breakaway Healthcare Forum, held in conjunction with TEDMED, April 16, 2013. 
 

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16 Apr

Health != Healthcare: New Technologies for Consumer Health & Wellness

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Opinion, Talks, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: .

In a recent Wall Street Journal essay, Marc Andreessen wrote: “Software is eating the world. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software. Healthcare and education are next up for fundamental software-based transformation.”

What is the impending disruption in healthcare, and what is PARC doing in this space? I’ll provide an overview of PARC’s healthcare program, including market need, business opportunity, and research thrusts.

A key insight is that health and healthcare are two different markets. I’ll explain what this means and why this creates breakthrough opportunities for Augmented Social Cognition—in particular, through the confluence of three technologies: social, mobile, and gamification. Under the hood, artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are used to augment human cognition and interaction, creating a new generation of “intelligent social web” technologies.

These technologies combine the benefits of the “information web” with those of the “social web”, enabling new consumer-centric approaches to health and wellness that increase engagement, improve health literacy and promote behavior change. I’ll give several examples of new technologies in the market and highlight research challenges that still need to be addressed.

I’m looking to engage, not to lecture, so come prepared to discuss, argue, and share ideas!

Keynote talk at WWW-2012 Web Intelligence & Communities workshop, Lyon, France, April 16, 2012.
Invited seminar at XRCE research center, Grenoble, France, April 18, 2012.

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15 Apr

Socio-Semantic Conversational Information Access

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Language, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: , , , , , .

We develop an innovative approach to delivering relevant information using a combination of socio-semantic search and filtering approaches. The goal is to facilitate timely and relevant information access through the medium of conversations by mixing past community specific conversational knowledge and web information access to recommend and connect users and information together. Conversational Information Access is a socio-semantic search and recommendation activity with the goal to interactively engage people in conversations by receiving agent supported recommendations. It is useful because people engage in online social discussions unlike solitary search; the agent brings in relevant information as well as identifies relevant users; participants provide feedback during the conversation that the agent uses to improve its recommendations.

Socio-Semantic Conversational Information Access

by Saurav Sahay, Ashwin Ram

WWW-2012 Workshop on Community Question Answering on the Web (CQA-12).

11 Apr

Health : Healthcare :: Learning : Education

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Education, Health & Wellness, Opinion, Talks, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: , , , .

With the advent of open education resources, social networking technologies and new pedagogies for online and blended learning, we are in the early stages of a significant disruption in current models of education. ‘Learning’ is beginning to peel away from ‘Education’ as a separate market, with its own set of opportunities and challenges for practitioners, technologists, and entrepreneurs. While ‘education’ is driven by schools, colleges, and governments, ‘learning’ focuses on empowering the individual to take charge of their learning.

Interestingly, a similar phenomenon is occurring in healthcare, fueled by the confluence of similar trends and technologies: open health resources, social networking technologies and new methodologies for consumer engagement. ‘Health’ is starting to emerge as a separate and disruptive market, with its own opportunities and challenges. While ‘healthcare’ is driven by providers, payers, and governments, ‘health’ focuses on empowering the consumer to take charge of their health and wellness. 

In this talk, I discuss recent trends in these two industries, explain why they are analogous, and discuss opportunities for user experience, big data, analytics and social capital research. I provide examples of social, mobile, and game technologies that are creating the disruption, and highlight key research challenges that are yet to be addressed.

Invited talk at UC Berkeley, iSchool “Thought Leaders in Data Science and Analytics”, April 11, 2012. 

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9 Feb

Taking Advantage of Now: The Consumer Health & Wellness Scene

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Talks, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: .

Taking Advantage of Now:
The Consumer Health & Wellness Scene

  • Lifestyle Innovation: defining successful business models
  • Opportunities on the horizon for corporates and investors
  • Innovation Partnering: strategic alliances at work to maximize consumer health & wellness appetite
  • Moving Goalposts: Market assessment to increase product pipelines

Moderator:

  • Will Rosenzweig, co-founder and Managing Director – Physic Ventures

Panelists:

  • Mark Murrison, President, Marketing and Innovation – MDVIP
  • Jack Young, Senior Investment Manager – Qualcomm Ventures
  • Mark Kapcynski, Corporate Development – Experian Consumer Direct
  • John Deedrick, Managing Director – Linn Grove Ventures
  • Ashwin Ram, Research Fellow & Area Manager of Socio-cognitive Computing, PARC a Xerox company
Invited panel presentation at IBF Consumer Health & Wellness Innovation Summit, Newport Beach, CA, February 9, 2012
ibfconferences.com/health-wellness-innovation-summit.html

15 Nov

Socio-Semantic Conversational Information Access

Posted by cognitivecomputing in Health & Wellness, Language, Web / Web 2.0. Tagged: , , , , , , .

The main contributions of this thesis revolve around development of an integrated conversational recommendation system, combining data and information models with community network and interactions to leverage multi-modal information access. We have developed a real time conversational information access community agent that leverages community knowledge by pushing relevant recommendations to users of the community. The recommendations are delivered in the form of web resources, past conversation and people to connect to. The information agent (cobot, for community/ collaborative bot) monitors the community conversations, and is ‘aware’ of users’ preferences by implicitly capturing their short term and long term knowledge models from conversations. The agent leverages from health and medical domain knowledge to extract concepts, associations and relationships between concepts; formulates queries for semantic search and provides socio-semantic recommendations in the conversation after applying various relevance filters to the candidate results. The agent also takes into account users’ verbal intentions in conversations while making recommendation decision.

One of the goals of this thesis is to develop an innovative approach to delivering relevant information using a combination of social networking, information aggregation, semantic search and recommendation techniques. The idea is to facilitate timely and relevant social information access by mixing past community specific conversational knowledge and web information access to recommend and connect users with relevant information. Language and interaction creates usable memories, useful for making decisions about what actions to take and what information to retain.

Cobot leverages these interactions to maintain users’ episodic and long term semantic models. The agent analyzes these memory structures to match and recommend users in conversations by matching with the contextual information need. The social feedback on the recommendations is registered in the system for the algorithms to promote community preferred, contextually relevant resources. The nodes of the semantic memory are frequent concepts extracted from user’s interactions. The concepts are connected with associations that develop when concepts co-occur frequently. Over a period of time when the user participates in more interactions, new concepts are added to the semantic memory. Different conversational facets are matched with episodic memories and a spreading activation search on the semantic net is performed for generating the top candidate user recommendations for the conversation.

The tying themes in this thesis revolve around informational and social aspects of a unified information access architecture that integrates semantic extraction and indexing with user modeling and recommendations.

Read the dissertation:

Socio-Semantic Conversational Information Access

by Saurav Sahay

PhD dissertation, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, November 2011.

smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/42855

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