Another interesting person I met at #healthfoo:
Kendra Markle hangs out at Stanford and does work on emotional automation, asking the question,"How can technology represent and convey compassion to augment the doctor-patient relationship?" It turns out that having a compassionate listener, even a computerized one, can help people improve adherence with medical treatment regimes.
An example is Carmen, an computerized person developed by Tim Bickmore at Northeastern University, which has dialogues with elderly patients and others that "build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships."
Kendra notes:
As an entrepreneur and founder/CEO of AlterActions, I build persuasive technology tools for healthy behavior change. My tools use the latest research findings in psychology and neuroscience combined with persuasive, mobile and social technology to coach people through a series of achievable behavior changes. My techniques produce lasting changes in lifestyle in people struggling with obesity, anxiety, chronic conditions and emotional health issues.
Interesting...will have to watch for this. While in the hospital, my husband was struggling emotionally because the physician seemed too busy to just listen to him. The physician's father, another doctor, came in and just sat down and talked with my husband. Made a world of difference in his recovery.
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