Designing a Human-Computer Dialog System for Medical Information Search

This article presents the Cogni-CISMeF project, which aims at improving medical information search in the CISMeF system by including a conversational agent to interact with the user in natural language. To study the cognitive processes involved during the information search, a bottom-up methodology was adopted. Experiments have been set up to obtain human dialogs dealing with medical information search. The analysis of these dialogs underlined the establishment of a common ground and accommodation effects to the user. A model of artificial agent is proposed. It leads the user in its information search by proposing to him examples, assistance and choices.