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Virtual agents can engage users on a social-emotional level and have great potential in improving population health, so it would be advantageous if one could create and distribute them without requiring advanced technical skills. We present a flexible commercial platform for scripting conversational interactions with virtual agents that can be easily published through a mobile app available to everyone. Trials of two different agents that have been jointly developed with healthcare partners, one in mental health and another in heart failure, demonstrate post-intervention improvements in psychological distress and health knowledge, respectively. Encouraging rates of engagement with the agent have also been observed, although with a notable decline over time for the mental health coach -- additional trials are scheduled to explore how to retain engagement more effectively.
Luerssen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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