Adopting Assistive Technologies in Healthcare Processes: A Chatbot for Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

The paper presents e-Health solutions for monitoring patients affected by Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Assistive technologies have a direct and positive impact on both the quality of life of patients and the overall management of the service. In the context of a wide project, we introduce an Ambient Assisted Living framework to investigate the adoption of telehealth and telemedicine applications in the healthcare process. First, we model the process of the hospital service where technological innovations have been applied. Second, we investigate the impact of a chatbot to improve the communications between operators and families. The chatbot obtained high adherence, compliance, and engagement of users. We provide evidence of how robust technological and organizational modelling can be successfully applied to support the staff of nutritionists staffs in ALS healthcare process. Furthermore, the solution discussed in this work provided a great impact during the COVID-19 emergency.