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

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