BLISS: Behaviour based language interactive speaking systems
The availability of large amounts of personal data (Big Data) and the significant recent advancements in language and speech technology offer new opportunities for self-management and empowerment of clients in healthcare. This research proposal adopts a broad definition of health and well-being as happiness and aims to develop an interactive, Dutch-speaking system that helps people enhance their well-being and happiness.
The idea is to search through large amounts of personal data from clients (texts, interviews, dialogues) to extract information about their health and well-being and to understand what makes them happy. To enable this, technology will be developed that can extract relevant information from Dutch texts and audio recordings. This information can then be used to design computer programs that can communicate with people in spoken Dutch, providing low-threshold support in their daily actions and managing their health and well-being. The information from Big Data can be used to personalize the system for individual clients, taking into account their personal needs and background.
This research proposal is innovative in several ways. Research with Big Data has so far primarily been based on written data, while this project also uses spoken interviews, as these are now collected much more frequently than written questionnaires. The advantage is that spoken data contain much more information than texts (such as intonation, emphasis, hesitations, etc.). Furthermore, this research is new because it develops low-threshold computer programs that can speak with people, making them suitable for those with low education levels, the visually impaired, and people with disabilities. Additionally, the communication is intelligent and personalized, helping people to ultimately take control of their health, well-being, and happiness. Lastly, this research is innovative because the technology is being developed for the Dutch language, which is important for clients to be addressed in their native language.
To test if everything works well and if the developed system can actually support people, the developed technology will be integrated into existing applications for day activities and agenda management that use gamification and are already used in healthcare. These enriched gaming applications will then be evaluated with large numbers of users.
This research will yield several results. First, important Dutch-language technology to analyze large amounts of texts and recordings about and from clients, extracting relevant information about their health and well-being. This technology can also be used for other purposes, such as improving a speech recognition system. Furthermore, this project will provide knowledge about an interactive system that can speak in Dutch, understand their responses, and have important information about the clients that can be used to improve their well-being, allowing them to maintain control. This system could also be used for other applications in healthcare. Important results will also include the knowledge and insights gained about what works best for whom.
