research-article

Substance Use Screening using Virtual Agents: Towards Automated Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT)

Authors:

Timothy Bickmore,

Steven SimonAuthors Info & Claims

IVA '20: Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Article No.: 5, Pages 1 - 7

https://doi.org/10.1145/3383652.3423869

Published: 19 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug use cause significant loss quality of life, and represent a large economic burden on society. Standardized questionnaires have been developed to enable healthcare providers to screen individuals for substance misuse problems that may require intervention. Although routine use of these screeners is promoted in many healthcare organizations, their administration can be irregular and lack follow through. In addition, patients may be reluctant to report substance use. We report on the development and validation of a Virtual Agent designed to automate the administration of a standard substance use screening instrument. We report on two validation studies in which a total of 57 patients at a US Veterans Administration medical center were screened by the virtual agent, comparing first to a research assistant administering the standard screening questionnaire, and second to a standard computerized text-based implementation of the questionnaire. Assessment correlations between the agent and human administration were all significant, ranging from rho=0.83 to 0.94, with more disclosure to the agent. Correlations were lower for Study 2 (0.56 - 0.88), with participants significantly more satisfied with the Agent compared to the standard tool.

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Yun HArjmand MSherlock PPaasche-Orlow MGriffith JBickmore T(2024)Keeping Users Engaged During Repeated Interviews by a Virtual Agent: Using Large Language Models to Reliably Diversify QuestionsProceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3652988.3673929(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
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Index Terms

Substance Use Screening using Virtual Agents: Towards Automated Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT)
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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cover image ACM Conferences

IVA '20: Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

October 2020

394 pages

ISBN:9781450375863

DOI:10.1145/3383652

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 October 2020

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IVA '20: ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

October 20 - 22, 2020

Scotland, Virtual Event, UK

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Overall Acceptance Rate 53 of 196 submissions, 27%

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https://doi.org/10.2196/49557
Yun HArjmand MSherlock PPaasche-Orlow MGriffith JBickmore T(2024)Keeping Users Engaged During Repeated Interviews by a Virtual Agent: Using Large Language Models to Reliably Diversify QuestionsProceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3652988.3673929(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652988.3673929
Steenstra IMurali PPerkins RJoseph NPaasche-Orlow MBickmore T(2024)Engaging and Entertaining Adolescents in Health Education Using LLM-Generated Fantasy Narrative Games and Virtual AgentsExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650983(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3650983
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Hurstak EOlafsson SO'Leary TCabral HPaasche-Orlow MBickmore TLugrin BLatoschik Mvon Mammen SKopp SPécune FPelachaud C(2023)Conversational Assessment of Mild Cognitive Impairment with Virtual AgentsProceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3570945.3607314(1-8)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2023
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Brady JLivingston NSawdy MYeksigian KZhou SBickmore TSimon SRubin A(2023)Development and Evaluation of a Relational Agent to Assist with Screening and Intervention for Unhealthy Drinking in Primary CareJournal of Technology in Behavioral Science10.1007/s41347-023-00332-38:4(432-445)Online publication date: 16-Aug-2023
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Schöbel SSchmitt ABenner DSaqr MJanson ALeimeister J(2023)Charting the Evolution and Future of Conversational Agents: A Research Agenda Along Five Waves and New FrontiersInformation Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-023-10375-926:2(729-754)Online publication date: 20-Apr-2023
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