Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Review article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Review article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Implementation of Anxiety UK’s Ask Anxia® chatbot service
T2 - Lessons learned
AU - Collins, Luke
AU - Nicholson, Niamh
AU - Lidbetter, Nicky
AU - Smithson, Dave
AU - Baker, Paul
PY - 2024/6/17
Y1 - 2024/6/17
N2 - Chatbots are increasingly being applied in the context of health care, providing access to services when there are constraints on human resources. Simple, rule-based chatbots are suited to high-volume, repetitive tasks and can therefore be used effectively in providing users with important health information. In this Viewpoint paper, we report on the implementation of a chatbot service called Ask Anxia as part of a wider provision of information and support services offered by the UK national charity, Anxiety UK. We reflect on the changes made to the chatbot over the course of approximately 18 months as the Anxiety UK team monitored its performance and responded to recurrent themes in user queries by developing further information and services. We demonstrate how corpus linguistics can contribute to the evaluation of user queries and the optimization of responses. On the basis of these observations of how Anxiety UK has developed its own chatbot service, we offer recommendations for organizations looking to add automated conversational interfaces to their services. [Abstract copyright: ©Luke Collins, Niamh Nicholson, Nicky Lidbetter, Dave Smithson, Paul Baker. Originally published in JMIR Human Factors (https://humanfactors.jmir.org), 17.06.2024.]
AB - Chatbots are increasingly being applied in the context of health care, providing access to services when there are constraints on human resources. Simple, rule-based chatbots are suited to high-volume, repetitive tasks and can therefore be used effectively in providing users with important health information. In this Viewpoint paper, we report on the implementation of a chatbot service called Ask Anxia as part of a wider provision of information and support services offered by the UK national charity, Anxiety UK. We reflect on the changes made to the chatbot over the course of approximately 18 months as the Anxiety UK team monitored its performance and responded to recurrent themes in user queries by developing further information and services. We demonstrate how corpus linguistics can contribute to the evaluation of user queries and the optimization of responses. On the basis of these observations of how Anxiety UK has developed its own chatbot service, we offer recommendations for organizations looking to add automated conversational interfaces to their services. [Abstract copyright: ©Luke Collins, Niamh Nicholson, Nicky Lidbetter, Dave Smithson, Paul Baker. Originally published in JMIR Human Factors (https://humanfactors.jmir.org), 17.06.2024.]
KW - chatbots
KW - anxiety disorders
KW - corpus linguistics
KW - conversational agents
KW - web-based care
U2 - 10.2196/53897
DO - 10.2196/53897
M3 - Review article
C2 - 38885016
VL - 11
JO - JMIR Human Factors
JF - JMIR Human Factors
SN - 2292-9495
M1 - e53897
ER -