Affective Medicine: a review of Affective Computing efforts in Medical Informatics

Background: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions”. AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the affective medicine field

A proposed framework of an interactive semi-virtual environment for enhanced education of children with autism spectrum disorders

Education of people with special needs has recently been considered as a key element in the field of medical education. Recent development in the area of information and communication technologies may enable development of collaborative interactive environments which facilitate early stage education and provide specialists with robust tools indicating the person's autism spectrum disorder level. Towards the goal of establishing an enhanced learning environment for children with autism this paper attempts to provide a framework of a semi-controlled real-world environment used for the daily education of an autistic person according to the scenarios selected by the specialists. The proposed framework employs both real-world objects and virtual environments equipped with humanoids able to provide emotional feedback and to demonstrate empathy. Potential examples and usage scenarios for such environments are also described

Using affective avatars and rich multimedia content for education of children with autism

Autism is a communication disorder that mandates early and continuous educational interventions on various levels like the everyday social, communication and reasoning skills. Computer-aided education has recently been considered as a likely intervention method for such cases, and therefore different systems have been proposed and developed worldwide. In more recent years, affective computing applications for the aforementioned interventions have also been proposed to shed light on this problem. In this paper, we examine the technological and educational needs of affective interventions for autistic persons. Enabling affective technologies are visited and a number of possible exploitation scenarios are illustrated. Emphasis is placed in covering the continuous and long term needs of autistic persons by unobtrusive and ubiquitous technologies with the engagement of an affective speaking avatar. A personalised prototype system facilitating these scenarios is described. In addition the feedback from educators for autistic persons is provided for the system in terms of its usefulness, efficiency and the envisaged reaction of the autistic persons, collected by means of an anonymous questionnaire. Results illustrate the clear potential of this effort in facilitating a very promising autism intervention

Mobile Assistive Technologies

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Shaping technologies for older adults with and without dementia: Reflections on ethics and preferences

As a result of several years of European funding, progressive introduction of assistive technologies in our society has provided many researchers and companies with opportunities to develop new information and communication technologies aimed at overcoming the digital divide of those at a greater risk of being left behind, as can be the case with healthy older people and those developing cognitive decline and dementia. Moreover, in recent years, when considering how information and communication technologies have been integrated into older people’s lives, and how technology has influenced these individuals, doubts remain regarding whether technologies really fulfil older users’ needs and wishes and whether technologies developed specifically for older users necessarily protect and consider main ethical values. In this article, we address the relevance of privacy, vulnerability and preservation of autonomy as key factors when involving older individuals as target users for information and communication technology research and development. We provide explanatory examples on ethical issues involved in the particular case of developing different types of information and communication technology for older people (from robotics to serious games), what previously performed research tells us about older adults’ preferences and wishes for information and communication technology and what steps should be taken into consideration in the near future

Introducing Neuroberry, a platform for pervasive EEG signaling in the IoT domain

The emergence of inexpensive off-the-shelf wireless EEG devices led researchers to explore novel paradigms in the field of Human Computer Interaction. In fact, the compliance of these devices with the IoT principles towards pervasive EEG signaling in smart home environments enables new models of interaction and a different perspective from traditional affective computing. In this paper, the implementation of wireless EEG (Emotiv EPOC and Mindawave) IoT connectivity of real time raw signals, through IoT hardware devices and through the Raspberry Pi 2, is presented

Information and communication technologies (ICT) for enhanced education of children with autism spectrum disorders

Recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies for people with special needs has led to significant changes in the way specialists and educators can address the daily impairments posed by people with abnormal behaviour, such as autism. Computer based educative methods are increasingly being considered as a key tool for educating people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). Recent research has demonstrated that persons with autism, especially children, enjoy interacting with computers particularly as they are free from the expectations and judgments that make social interaction problematic. Virtual Environments (VEs), usually accompanied by three dimensional (3D) humanoid characters have been proven to play an essential role in special education and social interventions. Emotionally expressive avatars (a computer user’s representation of himself/ herself or alter ego), can advance the quality of tutor-learner interaction, with unobtrusive wireless sensors integrating an autistic person’s feedback and reaction. In this paper we review some developments in information and communication technology (ICT) for managing children with ASDs and also describe the approach we are taking to developing a platform to enhance and mediate the teacher-child educational process

A scoping review of augmented/virtual reality health and wellbeing Interventions for older adults: redefining Immersive virtual reality

Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies are regularly used in psychology research to complement psychological interventions and to enable an individual to feel as if they are in an environment other than that of their immediate surroundings. A scoping review was performed to identify how AR/VR was being used with older adult populations to impact their physical and mental health. The review also sought to determine whether the terminology used in AR/VR research was consistent. The results show that 65 studies have been published in the last 20 years that meet the inclusion criteria (virtual/augmented reality) technology to impact older adults’ physical/mental health and wellbeing. Participants included healthy, physically, and cognitively impaired, and emotionally vulnerable older adults. We argue that over 70% of the studies included in this review were mislabeled as VR and only six papers included fully immersive VR/AR. The remaining studies use less immersive variants of virtual reality with their populations, and only one study made use of AR, which prompted the suggestion of a new definition for virtual reality. This paper also calls for an updated taxonomy of augmented and virtual reality definitions to address the lack of consistency found in studies that identify themselves as AR/VR when they are using less immersive technical set-ups, including displaying non-interactive videos on 2D screens

Evaluation of user satisfaction and usability of a mobile app for smoking cessation

Background Mobile apps have a great potential to support patients in healthcare, and to encourage healthy behavioral changes such as smoking cessation. Nevertheless, the user rejection levels are still high. A set of factors that has impact on the app effectiveness is related to the quality of those features that lead to positive user experiences when using the app. This work aims to evaluate the user experience, and more specifically the usability and the user satisfaction with a mobile application for smoking cessation. This will also provide a basis for future improvements. Methods We provided a smoking cessation mobile Android app to two different user cohorts, the smokers as valid users and the experts, for three weeks. The app featured usual functionalities to help quit smoking, including an achieved benefits section, mini-games to distract during cravings, and supportive motivational messages. We collected information about user experience, through game playability and message satisfaction questionnaires, and the experts’ opinions. We also considered usage of app sections, the duration of the mini-game sessions, and the user ratings for motivational messages. Results We included 45 valid users and 25 experts in this study. The questionnaire indicated 80% satisfaction rate for the motivational messages. According to game questionnaires, over 69% of the participants agreed that the games have good usability features, however, for questions related to mobility and gameplay heuristics, agreements were below 67%. The most accessed app sections were achieved benefits and the one with motivational messages. The experts described issues that could help to improve the application. Conclusions The combination of questionnaires with expert reports allowed to identify several problems and possible corrections. Our study showed that motivational messages have a good satisfaction rate, although it is necessary to consider technical features of some mobile devices that may hinder message reception. Games have good usability and it's expected that the addition of difficulty levels and a better accessibility to the game menu could make them more attractive and increase its usage. Future development of mHealth apps based on gamification and motivational messages need to consider these factors for better user satisfaction and usability.European Union's Horizon 2020 No 68112

COLAEVA: Visual Analytics and Data Mining Web-Based Tool for Virtual Coaching of Older Adult Populations

The global population is aging in an unprecedented manner and the challenges for improving the lives of older adults are currently both a strong priority in the political and healthcare arena. In this sense, preventive measures and telemedicine have the potential to play an important role in improving the number of healthy years older adults may experience and virtual coaching is a promising research area to support this process. This paper presents COLAEVA, an interactive web application for older adult population clustering and evolution analysis. Its objective is to support caregivers in the design, validation and refinement of coaching plans adapted to specific population groups. COLAEVA enables coaching caregivers to interactively group similar older adults based on preliminary assessment data, using AI features, and to evaluate the influence of coaching plans once the final assessment is carried out for a baseline comparison. To evaluate COLAEVA, a usability test was carried out with 9 test participants obtaining an average SUS score of 71.1. Moreover, COLAEVA is available online to use and explore.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 769830