ELIAS – an Agentic Interview Service
With ELIAS, researchers at DSI aim to simplify and reduce bias in the interview process by utilizing a friendly, human-like chatbot to engage with individuals, and complement it with another intelligent tool to facilitate sorting and understanding of the conversation.
Interviews are a standard method for gathering information in the social and health sciences, but they require a significant amount of time and effort. Interviews can also be influenced by the personal views or behavior of the person conducting the interview, which can lead to variations in how questions are asked or how answers are interpreted. This can make it hard to get consistent and honest answers, especially when people are asked about sensitive or personal topics. Some people might feel uncomfortable talking face-to-face or worry about being judged or identified.
To address these problems, this project aims to develop an agentic interview service, called ELIAS. ELIAS is a computer-based interview tool that uses a friendly, human-like digital assistant to ask questions in a caring and unbiased way. The system also includes smart software that helps sort and make sense of people’s answers, basically doing the very time-consuming job of organizing the information. Researchers can still oversee the interviews and how the answers are processed, but the system makes it much faster and easier to manage a large number of interviews.
The answers are anonymous, so no personal details are shared. However, they can still be instrumental: researchers can utilize this information to write scientific papers or to aid in training advanced computer programs that leverage large language models, such as chatbots or voice assistants. For example, these digital assistants could leverage the lessons learned from the interviews to help people prevent, manage, or treat certain conditions.
Project duration: 01.09.2025 – 31.12.2026
Contact: Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch
Website: ELIAS: An Agentic Interview Service
Project Team
Dr. Marcia Nißen, Scientific Director, Centre for Digital Health Interventions (CDHI), University of Zurich, University of St.Gallen & ETH Zurich; CDHI Core Director for Digital Women’s Health; Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen.
Prof. Dr. Janna Hastings, Assistant Professor of Medical Knowledge and Decision Support, Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich, and Vice-Director of the School of Medicine at the University of St. Gallen.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, Professor for Digital Health Interventions, Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich; Co-Director, School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen & Co-Chair Centre for Digital Health Interventions, University of Zurich, University of St.Gallen and ETH Zurich.