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A user modeling approach for reasoning about interaction sensitive to bother and its application to hospital decision scenarios

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Abstract

In this paper, we present a framework for interacting with users that is sensitive to the cost of bother and then focus on its application to decision making in hospital emergency room scenarios. We begin with a model designed for reasoning about interaction in a single-agent single-user setting and then expand to the environment of multiagent systems. In this setting, agents consider both whether to ask other agents to perform decision making and at the same time whether to ask questions of these agents. With this fundamental research as a backdrop, we project the framework into the application of reasoning about which medical experts to interact with, sensitive to possible bother, during hospital decision scenarios, in order to deliver the best care for the patients that arrive. Due to the real-time nature of the application and the knowledge-intensive nature of the decisions, we propose new parameters to include in the reasoning about interaction and sketch their usefulness through a series of examples. We then include a set of experimental results confirming the value of our proposed approach for reasoning about interaction in hospital settings, through simulations of patient care in those environments. We conclude by pointing to future research to continue to extend the model for reasoning about interaction in multiagent environments for the setting of time-critical care in hospital settings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. W., Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Robin Cohen, Hyunggu Jung & Michael Y. K. Cheng

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, 353 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Hyunggu Jung

  3. Faculty of Computer Science, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada

    Michael W. Fleming

Authors
  1. Robin Cohen
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  2. Hyunggu Jung
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  3. Michael W. Fleming
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  4. Michael Y. K. Cheng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hyunggu Jung.

Additional information

We are especially eager to be included in a special issue that is dedicated to the memory of Fiorella de Rosis and Alison Cawsey. De Rosis played a significant role in motivating co-author Fleming towards the completion of his PhD research, when presented at the UM01 conference. Cawsey provided valuable feedback to co-author Cohen, following her investigation of Cohen’s model of argumentation, as part of her own PhD research. The co-authors of this paper thus have a connection to the two researchers being honoured with this special issue.

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Cohen, R., Jung, H., Fleming, M.W. et al. A user modeling approach for reasoning about interaction sensitive to bother and its application to hospital decision scenarios. User Model User-Adap Inter 21, 441–484 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11257-010-9091-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11257-010-9091-3

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