Fully exploiting the potential of speech dialog in automotive applications

International audienceToday users are faced with infotainment devices and applications of increasing complexity. The design of easy-to-use and intuitive interfaces becomes a more and more challenging task. Users are usually not aware of the underlying applications and their restrictions when they want to use certain functionalities. Therefore, hierarchical menu structures are difficult to handle especially in situations where eyes and hands are occupied with other tasks, such as driving. For quite a while speech-enabled interfaces have been used to solve this problem since they allow users to control various applications without occupying hands and eyes. However, state-of-the-art multimodal applications often do not exploit the full potential that speech dialog offers simply because this modality is not well integrated with the "traditional" modalities such as graphics and haptics. The resulting speech interfaces do not run smoothly, exhibit plenty of inconsistencies concerning the GUI and are thus more or less tedious to use. Such kind of interfaces result in low acceptance because users do not see the immediate benefit. In this paper we present an approach that develops multimodal interfaces in an integrated way, thus ensuring highly consistent interfaces that closely couple the involved modalities and are thus easier to use

Reducing Alaska Native paediatric oral health disparities: a systematic review of oral health interventions and a case study on multilevel strategies to reduce sugar-sweetened beverage intake

Background. Tooth decay is the most common paediatric disease and there is a serious paediatric tooth decay epidemic in Alaska Native communities. When untreated, tooth decay can lead to pain, infection, systemic health problems, hospitalisations and in rare cases death, as well as school absenteeism, poor grades and low quality-of-life. The extent to which population-based oral health interventions have been conducted in Alaska Native paediatric populations is unknown. Objective. To conduct a systematic review of oral health interventions aimed at Alaska Native children below age 18 and to present a case study and conceptual model on multilevel intervention strategies aimed at reducing sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake among Alaska Native children. Design. Based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Statement, the terms “Alaska Native”, “children” and “oral health” were used to search Medline, Embase, Web of Science, GoogleScholar and health foundation websites (1970–2012) for relevant clinical trials and evaluation studies. Results. Eighty-five studies were found in Medline, Embase and Web of Science databases and there were 663 hits in GoogleScholar. A total of 9 publications were included in the qualitative review. These publications describe 3 interventions that focused on: reducing paediatric tooth decay by educating families and communities; providing dental chemotherapeutics to pregnant women; and training mid-level dental care providers. While these approaches have the potential to improve the oral health of Alaska Native children, there are unique challenges regarding intervention acceptability, reach and sustainability. A case study and conceptual model are presented on multilevel strategies to reduce SSB intake among Alaska Native children. Conclusions. Few oral health interventions have been tested within Alaska Native communities. Community-centred multilevel interventions are promising approaches to improve the oral and systemic health of Alaska Native children. Future investigators should evaluate the feasibility of implementing multilevel interventions and policies within Alaska Native communities as a way to reduce children's health disparities

Dementias Platform UK Clinical Studies and Great Minds register: Protocol of a targeted brain health studies re-contact database

Introduction: The case for de-risking neurodegenerative research and development through highly informative experimental medicine studies early in the disease process is strong. Such studies depend on the availability of genetic as well as high-granularity, longitudinal, phenotypic data in healthy aging individuals who can be recruited into early phase trials on the basis of their perceived dementia risk. Until now the creation of such research infrastructure has been hampered by the lack of expense and time required to gather the rich longitudinal data needed for adequate risk stratification. Dementias Platform UK (DPUK) is a public-private partnership that brings together data from over 40 cohorts in a standardised framework, which represents an until now unavailable opportunity to create such a resource through a streamlined brain health re-contact platform based on existing cohorts, as well as prospectively collected data. Methods and analysis: The DPUK re-contact platform consists of an opt-in (Great Minds, GM) and an opt-out component (Clinical Studies register, CSR). GM requires invited DPUK cohort participants to consent to targeted re-contact at the GM website and then to provide self-reported demographic and medical history information relevant to recruitment into clinical studies. Participants complete prospective browser- and smartphone-based cognitive tests and are given the option for remote genetic and actigraphy testing. The GM data is linked to the retrospective DPUK cohort dataset, including genotypic and longitudinal phenotypic data. The CSR is a solution for cohorts explicitly allowing targeted re-contact. Approved studies provide pre-screening criteria on the basis of the CSR/GM dataset, and individuals meeting these criteria are offered participation directly (GM) or through the parent DPUK cohort (CSR). Descriptive statistics will be used to summarise the outcomes relevant to the number of participants engaged with the register. Its sample size is not defined but is limited by the size of the DPUK parent cohorts. Ethics and Dissemination: The database was approved by the South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee, reference 18/SC/0268 on the 27th of June 2018 and amended on the 1st of November 2019. The availability of the Register to researchers will be disseminated through DPUK’s official communication channels as well as national and international scientific meetings. Strengths and limitations of this study - Solution for stratified recruitment into brain health studies on the basis of genetics and cross-cohort retrospective phenotypic data - Prospective standardised data collection: medical history, cognition, actigraphy - Explicit consent for re-contact on the basis of perceived dementia risk - Recruitment on the basis of retrospective data limited by data variance between cohorts - Sample generalisability limited through bias towards individuals with access to and ability to interact with digital technologies (Great Minds) as well as the potential unrepresentativeness of medical research volunteers in general (Great Minds and Clinical Studies Register)</p