Abstract
Successful collaboration between clinicians is particularly relevant regarding the quality of care process. In this context, the utilization of hybrid intelligence, such as conversational agents (CAs), is a reasonable approach for the coordination of diverse tasks. While there is a great deal of literature involving collaboration, little effort has been made to integrate previous findings and evaluate research when applying CAs in hospitals. By conducting an extended and systematic literature review and semi-structured expert interviews, we identified four major challenges and derived propositions where in-depth research is needed: 1) audience and interdependency; 2) connectivity and embodiment; 3) trust and transparency; and 4) security, privacy, and ethics. The results are helpful for researchers as we discuss directions for future research on CAs for collaboration in a hospital setting enhancing team performance. Practitioners will be able to understand which difficulties must be considered before the actual application of CAs.
Highlights
The introduction of conversational agents (CAs) holds immense potential for hospitals (e.g., Han and Yang 2018; Laranjo et al 2018; Seeger et al 2017) to improve collaboration between medical professionals and the coordination of health-related tasks (Georgiadis 2011; Just et al 2005).Hospitals aim to enhance the overall service quality and levels, providing better medical care for patients (Majeed Alhashem et al 2011)
Education, and liability are improved when CAs use sensors to determine if a person is too dominant in a conversation (Nakano and Fukuhara 2012), classify tasks according to their importance (Nezhad et al 2017) and enable clinicians to focus on relevant tasks (Bickmore et al 2010, 2011)
One expert described different interaction modes and surroundings: “there are areas in which a doctor is sterile and where a smartphone cannot be used” (E5). This led to our second proposition: RP2: We propose more research on how CAs interconnect different hospital employees, departments, disciplines, and existing clinical information systems to expedite the collaboration among involved stakeholders and enhance medical data retrieval
Summary
The introduction of conversational agents (CAs) holds immense potential for hospitals (e.g., Han and Yang 2018; Laranjo et al 2018; Seeger et al 2017) to improve collaboration between medical professionals and the coordination of health-related tasks (Georgiadis 2011; Just et al 2005). We carried out a systematic literature review (SLR) because the complexity of the interaction between humans and CAs has not yet been adequately covered in the extant research, and there is no overview of the major challenges that appear when CAs are introduced in hospitals. This descriptive approach examined preexisting literature describing the current situation based on scientific facts (Bear and Knobe 2016; Bell 1989) and summarized the findings under a suitable heading where literature has dealt with identical or similar issues. This article seeks to extend the IS literature by identifying areas that need further investigation and challenges that have not yet been adequately addressed
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