A New Model to Enhance Robot-Patient Communication: Applying Insights from the Medical World

Socially assistive robots need to be able to communicate effectively with patients in healthcare applications. This paper outlines research on doctor-patient communication and applies the principles to robot-patient communication. Effective communication skills for physicians include information sharing, relationship building, and shared decision making. Little research to date has systematically investigated the components of physician communication skills as applied to robots in healthcare domains. We propose a new model of robot-patient communication and put forward a research agenda for advancing knowledge of how robots can communicate effectively with patients to influence health outcomes.