Integrating Voice-Based Machine Learning Technology into Complex Home Environments

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges and solutions for deploying voice-based machine learning health technologies in real home environments, using a project that detects anger in caregivers of dementia patients as a case study.

Contribution

It presents an approach for developing voice ML solutions that are more likely to succeed in complex real-world home deployments, highlighting necessary development steps and ongoing challenges.

Findings

Deployment in 6 homes over 4 months demonstrated practical challenges.

Development steps can improve deployment success.

Ongoing work needed to address environmental and behavioral complexities.

Abstract

To demonstrate the value of machine learning based smart health technologies, researchers have to deploy their solutions into complex real-world environments with real participants. This gives rise to many, oftentimes unexpected, challenges for creating technology in a lab environment that will work when deployed in real home environments. In other words, like more mature disciplines, we need solutions for what can be done at development time to increase success at deployment time. To illustrate an approach and solutions, we use an example of an ongoing project that is a pipeline of voice based machine learning solutions that detects the anger and verbal conflicts of the participants. For anonymity, we call it the XYZ system. XYZ is a smart health technology because by notifying the participants of their anger, it encourages the participants to better manage their emotions. This is important because being able to recognize one's emotions is the first step to better managing one's anger. XYZ was deployed in 6 homes for 4 months each and monitors the emotion of the caregiver of a dementia patient. In this paper we demonstrate some of the necessary steps to be accomplished during the development stage to increase deployment time success, and show where continued work is still necessary. Note that the complex environments arise both from the physical world and from complex human behavior.