SynthesisJournal of medical Internet research2022
Language Use in Conversational Agent-Based Health Communication: Systematic Review.
Synthesis in Journal of medical Internet research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Design, Development, and Evaluation of Multimodal Conversational Agents for Health Data Registration and Monitoring: Framework Proposal and Pilot Exploratory Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- "I don't see anything specifically about Black/African Americans." Testing an Alzheimer-specific generative AI tool tailored for African American/Black communities.ACM transactions on computing for healthcare · 2026Article
- The PDC30 Chatbot-Development of a Psychoeducational Resource on Dementia Caregiving Among Family Caregivers: Mixed Methods Acceptability Study.JMIR aging · 2025Article
- Reference Hallucination Score for Medical Artificial Intelligence Chatbots: Development and Usability Study.JMIR medical informatics · 2024Article
- Roles, Users, Benefits, and Limitations of Chatbots in Health Care: Rapid Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Review
- Modeling the Conversation with Digital Health Assistants in Adherence Apps: Some Considerations on the Similarities and Differences with Familiar Medical Encounters.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGiven the growing significance of conversational agents (CAs), researchers have conducted a plethora of relevant studies on various technology- and usability-oriented issues. However, few investigations focus on language use in CA-based health communication to examine its influence on the user perception of CAs and their role in delivering health care services.
objectiveThis review aims to present the language use of CAs in health care to identify the achievements made and breakthroughs to be realized to inform researchers and more specifically CA designers.
methodsThis review was conducted by following the protocols of the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) 2020 statement. We first designed the search strategy according to the research aim and then performed the keyword searches in PubMed and ProQuest databases for retrieving relevant publications (n=179). Subsequently, 3 researchers screened and reviewed the publications independently to select studies meeting the predefined selection criteria. Finally, we synthesized and analyzed the eligible articles (N=11) through thematic synthesis.
resultsAmong the 11 included publications, 6 deal exclusively with the language use of the CAs studied, and the remaining 5 are only partly related to this topic. The language use of the CAs in these studies can be roughly classified into six themes: (1) personal pronouns, (2) responses to health and lifestyle prompts, (3) strategic wording and rich linguistic resources, (4) a 3-staged conversation framework, (5) human-like well-manipulated conversations, and (6) symbols and images coupled with phrases. These derived themes effectively engaged users in health communication. Meanwhile, we identified substantial room for improvement based on the inconsistent responses of some CAs and their inability to present large volumes of information on safety-critical health and lifestyle prompts.
conclusionsThis is the first systematic review of language use in CA-based health communication. The results and limitations identified in the 11 included papers can give fresh insights into the design and development, popularization, and research of CA applications. This review can provide practical implications for incorporating positive language use into the design of health CAs and improving their effective language output in health communication. In this way, upgraded CAs will be more capable of handling various health problems particularly in the context of nationwide and even worldwide public health crises.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.