Abstract
BackgroundConversational interfaces (CIs) in different modalities have been developed for health purposes, such as health behavioral intervention, patient self-management, and clinical decision support. Despite growing research evidence supporting CIs’ potential, CI-related research is still in its infancy. There is a lack of systematic investigation that goes beyond publication review and presents the state of the art from perspectives of funding agencies, academia, and industry by incorporating CI-related public funding and patent activities.ObjectiveThis study aimed to use data systematically extracted from multiple sources (ie, grant, publication, and patent databases) to investigate the development, research, and fund application of health-related CIs and associated stakeholders (ie, countries, organizations, and collaborators).MethodsA multifaceted search query was executed to retrieve records from 9 databases. Bibliometric analysis, social network analysis, and term co-occurrence analysis were conducted on the screened records.ResultsThis review included 42 funded projects, 428 research publications, and 162 patents. The total dollar amount of grants awarded was US $30,297,932, of which US $13,513,473 was awarded by US funding agencies and US $16,784,459 was funded by the Europe Commission. The top 3 funding agencies in the United States were the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Boston Medical Center was awarded the largest combined grant size (US $2,246,437) for 4 projects. The authors of the publications were from 58 countries and 566 organizations; the top 3 most productive organizations were Northeastern University (United States), Universiti Teknologi MARA (Malaysia), and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS; France). US researchers produced 114 publications. Although 82.0% (464/566) of the organizations engaged in interorganizational collaboration, 2 organizational research-collaboration clusters were observed with Northeastern University and CNRS as the central nodes. About 112 organizations from the United States and China filed 87.7% patents. IBM filed most patents (N=17). Only 5 patents were co-owned by different organizations, and there was no across-country collaboration on patenting activity. The terms patient, child, elderly, and robot were frequently discussed in the 3 record types. The terms related to mental and chronic issues were discussed mainly in grants and publications. The terms regarding multimodal interactions were widely mentioned as users’ communication modes with CIs in the identified records.ConclusionsOur findings provided an overview of the countries, organizations, and topic terms in funded projects, as well as the authorship, collaboration, content, and related information of research publications and patents. There is a lack of broad cross-sector partnerships among grant agencies, academia, and industry, particularly in the United States. Our results suggest a need to improve collaboration among public and private sectors and health care organizations in research and patent activities.
Highlights
The emergence of conversational interfaces (CIs) enables users to talk to a machine [1]
Our findings provided an overview of the countries, organizations, and topic terms in funded projects, as well as the authorship, collaboration, content, and related information of research publications and patents
There is a lack of broad cross-sector partnerships among grant agencies, academia, and industry, in the United States
Summary
The emergence of conversational interfaces (CIs) enables users to talk to a machine [1]. Recent examples of voice-based CIs include intelligent personal assistants (eg, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana) and CIs with multimodalities such as embodied conversational agents (ECAs). Multimodality can be designed to engage verbal and nonverbal interactions (eg, gaze movement, facial expression, and gesture) between the CI system and users [6,7]. This mode can be implemented using an embodied character and menu-based dialogue module to simulate a dialogue flow [8]. Conversational interfaces (CIs) in different modalities have been developed for health purposes, such as health behavioral intervention, patient self-management, and clinical decision support. There is a lack of systematic investigation that goes beyond publication review and presents the state of the art from perspectives of funding agencies, academia, and industry by incorporating CI-related public funding and patent activities
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