The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, in cooperation with Stanford University's Department of Computer Science, presented the 2011 Spring Symposium Series Monday through Wednesday, March 21–23, 2011 at Stanford University. The titles of the eight symposia were AI and Health Communication, Artificial Intelligence and Sustainable Design, AI for Business Agility, Computational Physiology, Help Me Help You: Bridging the Gaps in Human-Agent Collaboration, Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, Multirobot Systems and Physical Data Structures, and Modeling Complex Adaptive Systems As If They Were Voting Processes.

The titles of the eight symposia were Artificial Intelligence and Health Communication, Artificial Intelligence and Sustainable Design, Artificial Intelligence for Business Agility, Computational Physiology, Help Me Help You: Bridging the Gaps in Human-Agent Collaboration, Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning, Multirobot Systems and Physical Data Structures, and Modeling Complex Adaptive Systems As If They Were Voting Processes. The goal of the Artificial Intelligence and Health Communication symposium was to advance the conceptual design of automated systems that provide health services to patients and consumers through interdisciplinary insight from artificial intelligence, health communication and related areas of communication studies, discourse studies, public health, and psychology. There is a large and growing interest in the development of automated systems to provide health services to patients and consumers. In the last two decades, applications informed by research in health communication have been developed, for example, for promoting healthy behavior and for managing chronic diseases. While the value that these types of applications can offer to the community in terms of cost, access, and convenience is clear, there are still major challenges facing design of effective health communication systems. Overall, the participants found the format of the symposium engaging and constructive, and they The symposium was organized around five main expressed the desire to continue this initiative in concepts: (1) Patient empowerment and education further events.

AI has provided computational approaches to design processes and the representation of design knowledge. Design of materials, products, buildings and other artifacts have long been a focus of artificial intelligence research and application. Artificial intelligence representations and reasoning models have been influenced and inspired by design cognition resulting in AI methods as the basis for computer-aided design and decision support in many contexts. "Design for X" has become a way of changing design thinking so that downstream concerns are considered early in the design process. Imperatives for environmental and societal sustainability are challenging designers to think beyond Design for X and more broadly to consider factors that had been previously given little attention.

Design of effective health communication systems faces major challenges in terms of accessibility, trust, expert-to-lay knowledge translation, and persuasiveness. It is proposed that some of these challenges can be addressed by use of AI techniques in combination with empirically-based theoretical frameworks from the field of health communication and related areas. This symposium will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to identify possible solutions. AI and health communication topics of interest include communication interventions; games, conversational agents, or dialogue systems for healthy behavior promotion; intelligent interactive monitoring of patient's environment and needs; intelligent interfaces supporting access to healthcare; patient-tailored decision support, explanation for informed consent, and retrieval and summarization of online healthcare information; risk communication and visualization; tailored access to electronic medical records; tailoring health information for low-literacy, low-numeracy, or under-served audiences; virtual healthcare counselors; and virtual patients for training healthcare professionals. Scholars from health communication and related disciplines (sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse studies, etc.) will participate in discussion on the following issues as they pertain to the symposium goals: health literacy; healthcare provider-consumer communication, risk communication, including written and visual formats; and use of behavioral, persuasion, and argumentation theories for healthy behavior promotion. By examining these issues, the symposium is expected to lay down conceptual foundations for guiding future advances in AI healthcare systems.