NCT02750865: ECA-PAL

Conversational Agents to Improve Quality of Life in Palliative Care

Completed NA Last updated 13 July 2023

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) in Palliative Care in 367 participants. Completed in 24 October 2022.

Timeline

2 August 2017

Primary endpoint
24 October 2022

24 October 2022

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Boston Medical Center
Phase	NA
Status	Completed
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	none
Primary purpose	supportive care
Enrollment	367
Start date	2 August 2017
Primary completion	24 October 2022
Estimated completion	24 October 2022
Sites	1 location across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA)

Conditions studied

• Palliative Care — all drugs for Palliative Care →

Sponsor

Boston Medical Center

Who can join

21 and older, any sex, with Palliative Care. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

In this study the investigators will advance research on the development of easy to use technologies to empower patients. This is a scalable approach that has a significant potential to reduce suffering for palliative care patients and their caregivers. The investigators will adapt existing tested empathic conversational agents (ECA) for home-based cancer care management and inpatient bedside counseling to provide the following functions:

1. medication counseling;
2. physical activity promotion;
3. symptom management and continual screening for adverse events; and
4. alleviation of stress and anxiety
5. spiritual needs assessment; and
6. advanced care planning.

Data from the system will be monitored by a health professional, who communicates with members of the patient's care team. In this project, this activity will include facilitating referral for palliative care services.

The investigators will conduct pilot studies both at Boston Medical Center and at Northeastern University that will test system usability (Northeastern University and BMC) as well as interview burden (BMC only).

The investigators will conduct a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) to evaluate the agent technology, comparing usual care (UC) versus usual care plus the agent (UC+ECA) for patients 21 or older, with a life expectancy of \< 1 year, from outpatient clinics at Boston Medical Center (BMC). Each subject will be enrolled along with a caregiver surrogate subject. In addition to baseline data collection, there will be monthly phone surveys for six months; intervention subjects will use the system for a six-month period of time. In addition, the investigators will conduct a randomized trial within the intervention group to compare subjects getting functions 1-4 (above) versus subjects getting the augmented intervention with all six functions. The intervention will include a nurse management interface to monitor clinical alerts generated by the system to stimulate interventions by the clinical staff.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.