Adapting a Geriatrics Health Counseling Virtual Agent for the Chinese Culture

Zhe Zhang, Ha Trinh, Qiong Chen, Timothy W. Bickmore

Abstract: The design of a virtual conversational agent that provides cardiovascular health counseling to hospitalized geriatrics patients in China is described, along with the linguistic and cultural adaptations performed to tailor the agent for China. Results of a preliminary study comparing conversations with the agent to conversations with a geriatrician in a hospital in Shanghai demonstrated high levels of patient acceptance and satisfaction with the agent, although not as high as for the human doctor.