Systemic sclerosis & Raynaud's
Engagement Patterns With an Artificial Intelligence Health Coach for Systemic Sclerosis Self‐Management: A Mixed Methods Study
Authors' conclusion
Engagement with an AI health coach may not be fully captured by quantitative usage metrics alone. Engagement in our study was characterized by more frequent, action-oriented, and companionship-oriented interactions.
Study context
- Population
- Individuals with systemic sclerosis (SSc) using an artificial intelligence (AI) health coach for self-management over four weeks (90% female; mean age 55 years)
- Participants
- 20 individuals
- Comparison
- High-engagement vs low-engagement participants
- High engagementn = 8
- Low engagementn = 12reference
- Outcome
- Utility of an AI health coach for SSc self-management and patterns associated with engagement
- Follow-up
- Four weeks
Methodological detailsAI health coach powered by large language model (LLM), joint display integration of quantitative and qualitative data, inductive content analysis of chat transcripts
- AI health coach powered by LLM
- Joint display integration of quantitative and qualitative data
- Inductive content analysis of chat transcripts
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Coded interactions by purpose
- High engagement
- coded interactions, goals and strategies 23.6 vs 5.1
- High engagement
- coded interactions, information seeking 10.8 vs 3.9
- High engagement
- coded interactions, companionship 7.9 vs 1.0
- High engagement
- participants using coach for companionship 100% vs 33%
Further findings
- Fatigue, mean change (exploratory) · exploratory analyses — High engagement
- mean change −5.04 (95% CI −9.34–-0.73)
Fatigue, mean change (exploratory)
- No statistically significant between-group differences
Original publication
Engagement Patterns With an Artificial Intelligence Health Coach for Systemic Sclerosis Self‐Management: A Mixed Methods Study. Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken). Published 29 June 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →