DESIGN-IVA-HC workshop

The first workshop on

Designing Safe and Effective Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) for Health Care: Risks, Benefits, and Best Practices

Berlin, Germany, September 16, 2025

Integrating Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) in health care transforms patient care by enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and personalization. However, as these systems become more prevalent, ensuring they are designed safely is critical to minimize risks such as misinformation, bias, and data privacy breaches. Besides its safety, an IVA’s effectiveness and ease of use must be ensured. This workshop addresses these pressing concerns by exploring the benefits and challenges of IVAs in health care and providing best practices for developing systems that are not only innovative but also ethical, reliable, and patient-centered.

Objectives of the workshop

The aim is to learn about each other’s work and to collaboratively address challenges in particular concerning:

The present and prospective risks and benefits of IVAs in healthcare settings
The present and prospective benefits of IVAs, especially for vulnerable patient groups
Guidelines and principles on how IVAs should be designed and used, as well as guidelines and principles for designing the appearance and modeling of the behavior of IVAs in healthcare settings
The specific qualities of IVAs in terms of hybrid embodiment (co-embodiment, re-embodiment, trans-local embodiment)
Guidelines and principles on designing the social role and relationship trajectories of IVAs in health care settings
Organizational challenges in introducing IVAs in the healthcare system, including concepts and models describing the interactional social context of engaging with IVAs in healthcare settings, both with patients and health professionals
Guidelines and principles on how IVAs should be evaluated
Mitigating risks of trust and over-trust in long-term use by design

Workshop's Schedule

Session	Title	Authors
Oral Session 1 (9:00 - 9:45)	Emotionally Adaptive Virtual Health Assistants for Enhanced Social Presence and Trust	Navid Ashrafi, Julia Schorlemmer, Francesco Vona, Tanja Kojic, Stefan Hillmann, Ali Braytee, Yukai Wang, Baki Kocaballi, Catarina Pinto Moreira, Sebastian Moeller, Jan-Niklas Voigt-Antons
Oral Session 1 (9:45 - 10:30)	Understanding the usage of Augmented Reality for stress and anxiety disorders: a literature review	Francesco Vona, Merle Kuhlencord, Janosch Fox, Tanja Kojic, Youssef Shiban, Jan-Niklas Voigt-Antons
Coffee Break (10:30 - 11:00)
Oral Session 2 (11:00 - 11:45)	Assisting Under Constraints – Structural Obstacles of Agentic Technology for Health Data Collection	Philipp Graf, Manuela Marquardt
Oral Session 2 (11:45 - 12:30)	Towards Automatic Personalization of Speech Dialog for Enhanced User Experience	Philipp Lars Harnisch, Daniel Schuhmann, Ivana Cosic
Lunch (12:30)

Access to the Venue

HTW Berlin - Campus Wilhelminenhof

Address

HTW Campus, Wilhelminenhofstraße 75A, 12459, Berlin, Germany

Public Transportation

S-Bahn: S46, S47, S8, S85, S9 to Schöneweide station (then bus 165 or 265)
Bus: 165, 265 to Wilhelminenhofstraße/HTW stop
Tram: M17, 21, 37 to Schöneweide/Sterndamm station

Site Plan

IVA 2025 Conference Layout - September 16

Workshops, Tutorial, Doctoral Consortium (September 16)

G006/007

SLTAT WORKSHOP

H106

DESIGN-IVA-HC WORKSHOP

H107

THE FUTURE IS NEAR WORKSHOP

C352

DEBP-PVA WORKSHOP

C355

IGAIVA TUTORIAL

C356

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM

H001

CATERING

Organizers

Navid Ashrafi, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences

Philipp Lars Harnisch, Technische Universität Berlin

Stefan Hillmann, Technische Universität Berlin

Philipp Graf, Hochschule München

Manuela Marquardt, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

David Grieshammer, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences

Sven Quadflieg, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences

Jan-Niklas Voigt-Antons, Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences