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Can Healthcare Chatbots Have Empathy?

Jan 192020

Medical Chatbot

Ever since the introduction of chatbots on websites and assistants at home, our view of AI has changed. The main reason why it is changing, though, is the fact that we are seeing more human-like responses by chatbots. Today, they can provide us with more of a humanistic response when we express a variety of emotions. However, one industry where more work has to be done is that of healthcare. Could we really expect a healthcare chatbot to be able to give us empathy?

This feature may change in the near future. With around one fifth of the US populace now owners of a smart speaker, AI has been well-received. Indeed, the global health assistant market is growing. Reports suggest that it could be worth as much as $3.5bn as an industry in 2025.

Take a look at the various ‘skills’ you can get for your Amazon Alexa, for example, and you’ll notice various options. One particular choice is to go for the Mayo Clinic’s First Aid Skill. This skill ensures that we can give our bots the opportunity to provide “hands-free answers from a trusted source”. By delivering us useful health information, this is becoming a great solution for things like remote diagnosis of conditions, and even long-distance monitoring of therapeutic results.

However, the question still remains – can we expect AI to show us empathy?

When you raise a condition that you have/could have, can you really expect a chat bot to feel empathy for your condition?

That is the next part of the discussion. At the moment, when we get a response from a chatbot or a smart speaker in the medical industry, it’s purely factual. Sometimes, this can lead to an feeling somewhat impersonal, or to feeling insulted or hurt.

This is a big reason why so many people are now looking to get involved with making chatbots a touch more human. While there are huge improvements already in things like early diagnosis of conditions and helping people to spot real risks, we’re still at an early phase with regards to empathy emanating from our speakers.

At the moment, groups like the Mayo Clinic are working to try and find ways to make their hardware and software more friendly to humans. While other concerns exist, like raising a concern and then escalating that to being able to connect with a medical professional, empathy is a big part of the discussion.

Until we can find a way to make our chatbots respond and react in the way that a real medical professional should, there will likely be limits. Make no mistake, though; the speed at which the use of chatbots has grown means that, in the near future, an empathetic response might not be the pipe dream that it might sound like today. How are you feeling today?

Citation

https://www.everydayhealth.com/healthy-living/the-future-of-voice-tech-in-healthcare-chatbots-with-empathy/

Could Virtual Reality Help Children with ADHD?

May 262019

For many parents, helping your child who suffers from ADHD can feel quite exhausting. Today, there are many classes and solutions developed purely with the idea of helping your children cope with their condition. Sometimes, though, the options might just not feel diverse enough. One option that is being developed at the moment, though, is the use of virtual reality for ADHD children.

Virtual reality has quietly exploded as the next form of entertainment – a transformative means of interacting with the things we enjoy. A new study by the UC David Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, though, shows promise that VR could be used to help ADHD sufferers.

This is going to help children suffering from the disorder to minimise distraction, according to their latest press release. The research lead on the study at the MIND Institute, Dr. Julie Schweitzer, said: “I was talking to a parent who told me when she was in law school studying for the bar she was studying in noisy cafes,

“Eventually, she learned to block out everything around her. But now she wishes her son could learn to do the same.”

The aim is to help use VR to give children an easier time practicing on focusing on objects of importance. It would not involve clinical treatment, and it would be something that could be used in real-life situations. Part of the challenge with ADHD can come from helping children to focus on situations. With VR, the level of realism in the situations they’ll be focusing on can feel that bit more immersive.

The purpose of the study

The aim of the research, then, is quite simple. They will send each participant home with a VR headset, that is programmed to use a 25-minute training session per day. It would put them in a location where there are distractions that they need to overcome. The logic, then, is that the children will become more used to distractions that could otherwise snap their focus.

Now, when they are in a real brick and mortar classroom, they should already be used to distraction. This should help them to become much more alert to the matter at hand: the actual lesson. This could cut down on distraction and maintain a higher level of day-to-day focus in the children. During the training, they’ll be given a classroom-like environment, and go through an exposure therapy session. It’s built upon the same ideals where VR has been used to help those with anxiety, and could offer much of the same benefits to ADHD children.

The researchers will be able to help children to become more focused and increase their score, reducing the likelihood that they will become distracted during lessons. For parents who worry about their children not taking in enough during education, then, this could be the development that you desire.

Until more detail is released from the finding of the studies, though, at the moment this is just a theory. It will, though, be very interesting to see the results of the study when they are finally released.

The scoop on artificial synapses

Future Medical Technology Comments Off

Feb 042019

For some time now, we’ve been hearing people tell us that, soon enough, we’ll have circuitry more powerful and more efficient than the human mind. It looks like we might finally be on the edge of this becoming true, too: circuitry inspired by biology is in the process of being created to help create low-powered AI chips.

While this is still very much in an early developmental phase, the hope is that – with some hurdles still to overcome – we could start creating AI chips with far less demand than we presently can.

Indeed, this latest finding from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology has created something very impressive indeed. They have developed a new magnetically controlled electronic synapse. This new synapse is going to be made like an AI version of the very ones which link neurons within the mind. However, they are much faster than our brains: millions of times faster, in fact.

With using around 1/1000^th of the energy of the brain, too, this is by far and away the most efficient – in both performance and power use – artificial synapse to date. With the ability to gather so many signals and fire out electronic pulses all at once, this could be a much more impressive alternative to the more traditional transistor.

Created by using neuromorphic chips, these will work very much in the similar function to the human brain. This is naturally causing immense excitement within the scientific community. This would allow for us to easily run things like artificial networks – a key construct of modern AI development – with even greater control and efficiency than ever before.

Best of all? It would allow for vast increases and changes with regards to energy efficiency: the results could be absolutely outstanding.

Still some work to be done

However, as you may expect, such hardware still has a veritable glut of issues to be worked out and corrected. For sample, they are yet to be upscaled to work within a large device, so it’s hard to be clear about whether or not a chip could be built onto one. Also, they are going to be running at temperatures of around 5K at present: no normal computing practice would allow for such conditions.

So, while the development of a new artificial synapse does feel closer than ever, it’s also pretty clear that it’s still something very much for the decade(s) to come.

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