Medical Shared Decision Making with a Virtual Agent

Shared decision making (SDM) is a process in which patients and clinicians work together to make medical decisions based on clinical evidence that balances risks and expected outcomes with patient preferences and values. SDM has been advocated as the ideal model for patient decision-making in healthcare. However, SDM is rarely used in practice due, in part, to limited availability of healthcare professionals trained in these techniques. In this work, we describe the design of a virtual decision coach to help women participate in SDM about prenatal testing for Down syndrome. In a quasi-experimental evaluation study, participants demonstrated significant increases in knowledge, high levels of satisfaction with their final decision and low levels of decisional conflict and regret, indicating that virtual agents can effectively perform in the role of decision coach and facilitate the implementation of SDM.