Optimizing Patient-AI Dialogue: Integrating Empathic Technology

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Patient empowerment is a key trend in medical informatics.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) presents opportunities for personalized, patient-centered healthcare support.
• Existing systems lack advanced conversational capabilities for empathic patient interaction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a theoretical framework for an advanced medical conversational agent.
• To propose a conceptual model for an empathic AI system.
• To enhance patient-AI dialogue for more human-like support.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual model: Holistic Empathic AI (HEAI).
• Implementation: Chatbot (PAI-bot).
• Architecture: Integrates cognitive principles, natural language dialogue, user state detection, and adaptive response generation.

Main Results:

• A multidimensional well-being score (physical, emotional, cognitive, social) is a core component.
• The model supports dynamic interaction adjustment via real-time analysis.
• The proposed architecture facilitates adaptive and personalized patient support.

Conclusions:

• Establishes the conceptual foundation for empathic AI in healthcare.
• The HEAI model offers a pathway for developing more human-like AI support systems.
• While not yet clinically implemented, the framework guides future research and development.