TY - JOUR A1 - Schachner, Theresa A1 - Gross, Christoph A1 - Hasl, Andrea A1 - Wangenheim, Florian von A1 - Kowatsch, Tobias T1 - Deliberative and paternalistic interaction styles for conversational agents in digital health BT - procedure and validation through a web-based experiment JF - Journal of medical internet research : international scientific journal for medical research, information and communication on the internet ; JMIR N2 - Background: Recent years have witnessed a constant increase in the number of people with chronic conditions requiring ongoing medical support in their everyday lives. However, global health systems are not adequately equipped for this extraordinarily time-consuming and cost-intensive development. Here, conversational agents (CAs) can offer easily scalable and ubiquitous support. Moreover, different aspects of CAs have not yet been sufficiently investigated to fully exploit their potential. One such trait is the interaction style between patients and CAs. In human-to-human settings, the interaction style is an imperative part of the interaction between patients and physicians. Patient-physician interaction is recognized as a critical success factor for patient satisfaction, treatment adherence, and subsequent treatment outcomes. However, so far, it remains effectively unknown how different interaction styles can be implemented into CA interactions and whether these styles are recognizable by users. Objective: The objective of this study was to develop an approach to reproducibly induce 2 specific interaction styles into CA-patient dialogs and subsequently test and validate them in a chronic health care context. Methods: On the basis of the Roter Interaction Analysis System and iterative evaluations by scientific experts and medical health care professionals, we identified 10 communication components that characterize the 2 developed interaction styles: deliberative and paternalistic interaction styles. These communication components were used to develop 2 CA variations, each representing one of the 2 interaction styles. We assessed them in a web-based between-subject experiment. The participants were asked to put themselves in the position of a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These participants were randomly assigned to interact with one of the 2 CAs and subsequently asked to identify the respective interaction style. Chi-square test was used to assess the correct identification of the CA-patient interaction style. Results: A total of 88 individuals (42/88, 48% female; mean age 31.5 years, SD 10.1 years) fulfilled the inclusion criteria and participated in the web-based experiment. The participants in both the paternalistic and deliberative conditions correctly identified the underlying interaction styles of the CAs in more than 80% of the assessments (X-1(,8)8(2)=38.2; P<.001; phi coefficient r(phi)=0.68). The validation of the procedure was hence successful. Conclusions: We developed an approach that is tailored for a medical context to induce a paternalistic and deliberative interaction style into a written interaction between a patient and a CA. We successfully tested and validated the procedure in a web-based experiment involving 88 participants. Future research should implement and test this approach among actual patients with chronic diseases and compare the results in different medical conditions. This approach can further be used as a starting point to develop dynamic CAs that adapt their interaction styles to their users. KW - conversational agents KW - chatbots KW - human-computer interaction KW - physician-patient relationship KW - interaction styles KW - deliberative KW - interaction KW - paternalistic interaction KW - digital health KW - chronic KW - conditions KW - COPD Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2196/22919 SN - 1438-8871 VL - 23 IS - 1 PB - Healthcare World CY - Richmond, Va. ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Becker, Katrin Anne A1 - Riethmueller, Joachim A1 - Seitz, Aaron P. A1 - Gardner, Aaron A1 - Boudreau, Ryan A1 - Kamler, Markus A1 - Kleuser, Burkhard A1 - Schuchman, Edward A1 - Caldwell, Charles C. A1 - Edwards, Michael J. A1 - Grassme, Heike A1 - Brodlie, Malcolm A1 - Gulbins, Erich T1 - Sphingolipids as targets for inhalation treatment of cystic fibrosis JF - Advanced drug delivery reviews N2 - Studies over the past several years have demonstrated the important role of sphingolipids in cystic fibrosis (CF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute lung injury. Ceramide is increased in airway epithelial cells and alveolar macrophages of CF mice and humans, while sphingosine is dramatically decreased. This increase in ceramide results in chronic inflammation, increased death of epithelial cells, release of DNA into the bronchial lumen and thereby an impairment of mucociliary clearance; while the lack of sphingosine in airway epithelial cells causes high infection susceptibility in CF mice and possibly patients. The increase in ceramide mediates an ectopic expression of beta 1-integrins in the luminal membrane of CF epithelial cells, which results, via an unknown mechanism, in a down-regulation of acid ceramidase. It is predominantly this down-regulation of acid ceramidase that results in the imbalance of ceramide and sphingosine in CF cells. Correction of ceramide and sphingosine levels can be achieved by inhalation of functional acid sphingomyelinase inhibitors, recombinant acid ceramidase or by normalization of beta 1-integrin expression and subsequent re-expression of endogenous acid ceramidase. These treatments correct pulmonary inflammation and prevent or treat, respectively, acute and chronic pulmonary infections in CF mice with Staphylococcus aureus and mucoid or non-mucoid Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Inhalation of sphingosine corrects sphingosine levels only and seems to mainly act against the infection. Many antidepressants are functional inhibitors of the acid sphingomyelinase and were designed for systemic treatment of major depression. These drugs could be repurposed to treat CF by inhalation. KW - Ceramide KW - Acid sphingomyelinase KW - Cystic fibrosis KW - COPD KW - Inhalation Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addr.2018.04.015 SN - 0169-409X SN - 1872-8294 VL - 133 SP - 66 EP - 75 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -