Virtual Humans and Avatars - Healthcare Personal Agents in the Palm of Your Hand (LB855)

The advent of wireless sensors and miniaturized wearables have made the possibility of home diagnostics prior to a doctor visit and connected healthcare a reality. Engagement of everyday people for self diagnosis, however, remains a continued challenge as in most cases the much needed user friendly and engaging user interface for wireless devices are lacking. Recent advancements in the fields of physiology, psychology, artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language learning, computer graphics, gamification and cinematography have made the development of virtual human/ avatar personal health agents that are engaging, wireless smart phone and tablet native, and personalized possible. We here describe development of a personalized virtual human/ avatar health agent for incentivized, gamified, home self testing of 21 indications using FDA approved miniaturized wearable medical diagnostic devices. The avatars are designed to have multiple characters capable of understanding 15 different languages. Data obtained from patient interactions and device testing is stored in the cloud for analysis. Aesthetics of patient engagement and gamification will be presented. Development of disease specific scripts to determine different stages of a particular disorder including live physician telemedicine capabilities and connected healthcare will be described. Our findings are used as a solution for the development of team SMART McCoy's solution for the Qualcomm Medical Tricorder X Prize competition. In full development this system will assist in lessening the unnecessary primary care doctor visits (i.e., more than $10 billion annual cost in US alone) and provides the mean for making connected healtcare and precision medicine a reality.