A motivational health companion in the home as part of an intelligent health monitoring sensor network

This paper describes our work in progress to develop a personal monitoring system that can monitor the physical and emotional condition of a patient by using contextual information from a sensor network, provide the patient with feedback concerning their health status and motivate the patient to adopt behavior with a positive health impact (such as exercising or taking medication at the right moment). We will extend the capabilities of an existing robotic health buddy with a (DBN based) sensor network. Then we will carry out a series of controlled, long-term field experiments where we identify and evaluate the effects of various agent social communicative behaviors on the user's adoption of health improving lifestyle patterns. The findings of the experiments will inform the final design of the health buddy and its behaviors. We will also realize system adaptivity of the data processing and data fusion methods as well as the health buddy adaptivity to the user's emotional state. The project will limit itself to monitoring and motivating people who suffer from cardiovascular chronic conditions and to the home environment.