Professional representation of conversational agents for health care: a scoping review protocol

The purpose of this scoping review is to examine the professional representation of conversational agents that are used for health care. Professional characteristics associated with these agents will be identified, and the prevalence of these characteristics will be determined.

Conversational agents that are used for health care lack the qualifications and capabilities of real health professionals, but this fact may not be clear to some patients and health seekers. This problem may be exacerbated when conversational agents are described as health professionals or are given professional titles or appearances. To date, the professional representation of conversational agents that are used for health care has received little attention in the literature.

This review will include scholarly publications on conversational agents that are used for health care, particularly descriptive/developmental case studies and intervention/evaluation studies. This review will consider conversational agents designed for patients and health seekers, but not health professionals or trainees. Agents addressing physical and/or mental health will be considered.

This review will be conducted in accordance with JBI methodology for scoping reviews. The databases to be searched will include MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase (Elsevier), CINAHL with Full Text (EBSCO), Scopus (Elsevier), Web of Science (Clarivate), ACM Guide to Computing Literature (ACM Digital Library), and IEEE Xplore (IEEE). The extracted data will include study characteristics, basic characteristics of the conversational agent, and characteristics relating to the professional representation of the conversational agent. The extracted data will be presented in tabular format and summarized using frequency analysis. These results will be accompanied by a narrative summary.