Heallo: Conversational System for Communication Training in Healthcare Professional Education

Abstract

Effective communication is critical in the healthcare setting to ensure the safety and quality of patient care. To increase the accuracy and efficiency of communication, specific communication protocols have been developed. However, the current teaching of communication protocols remains in the theoretical realm, lack of effective training methods and practice environment. The purpose of this research is to assist communication training in healthcare professional education. We begin by designing communication tasks and collecting conversations on real-world handover cases. Then we propose Heallo – a computer conversational system that provides simulated scenarios for healthcare communication tasks. Specifically, Heallo converses with the user in a simulated communication task, assuming the role of the receiver. After the conversation, it will analyze the entire communication history and generate a detailed evaluation report based on the communication protocol. Heallo has received positive responses from healthcare professionals and has been incorporated into a hospital training program.