Our Goal

In partnership with Dr. Hyekyun Rhee from The University of Texas at Austin's School of Nursing, Camp Cura's goal was to design a scalable platform to help young adults communicate their chronic disease by socially and emotionally connecting with a Virtual Being as a friend. ​Camp Cura’s prototype is an experience for young adults to discover how to communicate and manage their asthma independently.​ We wanted to explore humanlike conversation using GPT-3 to socially and emotionally connect between the user and the character.

The Research

Did you know that...?

44% of children and >60% of adults with current asthma had uncontrolled asthma (2018-2020)

Frequent and intense symptoms lead to an increased risk of acute healthcare utilization, school absenteeism/missing work days, and poor quality of life.

Adolescents and young adults suffer more significant asthma-related morbidity than other age groups. 

If untreated, long-term lung damage (‘lung remodeling”) can occur.

~70% of adults with severe asthma reported having had asthma symptoms before the age of 20. 

Untreated pediatric asthma can potentially progress to active or serious disease as an adult. 

Discontinuity of asthma care among young adults with asthma is common.

Adolescents with asthma seek guidance and value support from peers with asthma in managing asthma.

Interactions/support with peers with asthma positively impact asthma management and overall well-being in adolescents with asthma.

Dangers of Transition in Adolescents and Young Adults with Asthma

Adolescents and young adults have diminished parental support and involvement.

As they grow more independent they develop poor treatment adherence and see more changes in their environment and lifestyle. 

Inadequate transition readiness involves neglect or negative emotional reactions, poor communication skills, inadequate or lack of guidance and support from providers, and deficiencies in self-management knowledge and skills.

Additionally there is a declining health among teens with chronic condition during transition. There are increased ED visits and associated healthcare costs.

Do you think an AI Agent could act as a  Peer or Friend?

Camp Cura's Benefits

Improved accessibility to information and support                           

Personalization

Increased user engagement

Data collection in real time

Scalability

The Challenges

Accuracy and adequacy

Privacy and security

User trust and acceptance

Limited empirical evidence

Integration with healthcare systems/workflows

Resource intensive

Next Steps

We want to continue developing the characters and further refine the AI modeling.

Collect feedback by test it with adolescents and young adults with asthma.

Scale it to address other diseases and conditions common in young adults.

Explore the possibility of making it a multiplayer game.