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Blissful Agents: Adjuncts to Group Medical Visits for Chronic Pain and Depression

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Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10011))

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Abstract

In this paper we describe a conversational virtual agent that is designed to be used in conjunction with group medical visits to help treat individuals with chronic pain and depression using non-medical treatments including yoga, meditation, and self-massage. Results from two rounds of pilot testing indicate that patients like the virtual agent and find that it helps them manage their condition.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by grant AD-1304-6218 from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Ameneh Shamekhi & Timothy Bickmore

  2. Department of Family Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA

    Anna Lestoquoy, Lily Negash & Paula Gardiner

Authors
  1. Ameneh Shamekhi
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  2. Timothy Bickmore
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  3. Anna Lestoquoy
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  4. Lily Negash
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  5. Paula Gardiner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ameneh Shamekhi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    David Traum

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    William Swartout

  3. US Army Research Laboratory, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Peter Khooshabeh

  4. Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Stefan Kopp

  5. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Stefan Scherer

  6. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Anton Leuski

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Shamekhi, A., Bickmore, T., Lestoquoy, A., Negash, L., Gardiner, P. (2016). Blissful Agents: Adjuncts to Group Medical Visits for Chronic Pain and Depression. In: Traum, D., Swartout, W., Khooshabeh, P., Kopp, S., Scherer, S., Leuski, A. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10011. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_49

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_49

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47664-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47665-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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