Virtual Health Coach Bridges Rural Cardiovascular Care Gaps
This software application provides a virtual agent for individuals with chronic conditions like hypertension and diabetes, offering personalized coaching and guidance via smartphone. Its key advantage lies in its tailored approach to overcome geographic and social barriers to care, particularly for rural individuals, while integrating objective health monitoring.
Description
The invention is a software application featuring a virtual agent accessible via smartphone. This agent provides longitudinal coaching and patient-centered guidance on health behaviors, monitoring, self-care, and education for individuals with chronic medical conditions. A core innovative aspect is the agent's use of synthetic speech and animated, nonverbal conversational behavior, fostering an empathic, therapeutic alliance as users interact by selecting conversational responses. The program is specifically tailored to rural individuals, integrating content and operation to address geographic and social barriers to care. It also incorporates objective health monitoring, such as integration with a home blood pressure cuff. The content focuses on validated self-care, spanning disease-specific knowledge acquisition, adherence to treatments, health promotion behaviors, tracking health metrics, and adherence to treatment and action.Applications
- Remote patient monitoring for cardiovascular diseases.- Chronic disease management platforms for healthcare providers.
- Telehealth solutions for underserved rural populations.
- Digital therapeutics for medication adherence and self-care.
- Health education and literacy programs for at-risk individuals.
Advantages
- Provides empathic, personalized coaching for chronic condition management.- Overcomes geographic and social barriers to care for rural individuals.
- Integrates with objective health monitoring devices like blood pressure cuffs.
- Offers comprehensive, validated self-care content covering maintenance, monitoring, and management.
- Promotes pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic strategies and adherence to evidence-based practices.