A Framework for Addressing the Risks and Opportunities In AI-Supported Virtual Health Coaches
This addresses design challenges for researchers, designers, clinicians, and patients in healthcare, but it is incremental as it builds on existing data science pipelines.
The paper tackles the risks and opportunities in AI-supported virtual health coaches by presenting a novel framework that augments a traditional data science pipeline with four key guiding goals: reliability, fairness, engagement, and ethics.
Virtual coaching has rapidly evolved into a foundational component of modern clinical practice. At a time when healthcare professionals are in short supply and the demand for low-cost treatments is ever-increasing, virtual health coaches (VHCs) offer intervention-on-demand for those limited by finances or geographic access to care. More recently, AI-powered virtual coaches have become a viable complement to human coaches. However, the push for AI-powered coaching systems raises several important issues for researchers, designers, clinicians, and patients. In this paper, we present a novel framework to guide the design and development of virtual coaching systems. This framework augments a traditional data science pipeline with four key guiding goals: reliability, fairness, engagement, and ethics.