Conversational Agents to Improve Quality of Life in Palliative Care
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02750865. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
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.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT02750865
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 367 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 21 Years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Aug 1, 2017
- Primary completion
- Oct 23, 2022
- Completion
- Oct 23, 2022
- Last update posted
- Jul 12, 2023
2017 – 2022
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston Medical Center | Boston | Massachusetts | 02118 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02750865, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Jul 12, 2023 · Synced Sep 8, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT02750865 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.