Designing Conversational AI for Automated Healthcare Consultations
Using Conversation Analysis expertise to inform the development of an AI clinical assistant for healthcare consultations.
Adam Brandt and Spencer Hazel are collaborating with colleagues at Ufonia Ltd, a digital health company based in Oxford, UK.
Ufonia have developed Dora, an AI-powered clinical assistant used for routine clinical consultations on the telephone. Using Conversation Analysis, a qualitative form of linguistic analysis, Brandt and Hazel have analysed a range of telephone conversations between:
- Dora and test users
- Dora and real patients
- human clinicians and patients
This helped them identify ways to further enhance Dora’s conversational behaviours.
Project outputs
In their first project, funded by a British Academy Innovation Fellowship (2022-23), they identified general principles for designing effective conversational AI systems. This led to the development of their CADENCE design method.
Their second project, funded by the UKRI Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst scheme (2024-26), explored how clinical empathy behaviours can be achieved with Dora.
Brandt and Hazel have published their work to date in journals in the fields of:
- discourse and communication
- human-computer interaction
- intercultural communication
They have presented at over 20 academic and industry events across 10 countries. They were also awarded a British Academy Talent Development Award (2026-27) to upskill further in conversation design and prompt engineering, enabling them to continue this line of research with the ever-changing tech industry. In 2026 the project was shortlisted for Newcastle University's Engagement and Place Awards.
Find out more
- From Newcastle blog
- Interactional AI website
- British Academy Innovation Fellowship webpage
- Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst grant webpage
- researcher profiles:
- Dr Adam Brandt, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics
- Dr Spencer Hazel, Reader in Applied Linguistics and Communication
Acknowledgements
This programme of research has also involved significant contributions from:
- colleagues at Ufonia (past and present)
- British Academy and UKRI Innovate UK for supporting our research
- Kleopatra Sideridou, as Research Assistant on the British Academy Innovation Fellowship project
- Andrew Harris, as Research Associate on the UKRI Innovate UK project
- patients, clinicians and testers who have undertaken telephone calls with Dora and given permission for these to be used for research purposes