KA-Recsys: Knowledge Appropriate Patient Focused Recommendation Technologies

Abstract

1 MOTIVATION AND GOAL Diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease demand that patients take an active role in disease management and seek health information for decision-making and self-management [1]. The most common methods of providing reliable information to patients include health literacy workshops and patient education materials [12, 15]. However, these materials are prepared for the general patient population and not always tailored to each patient’s specific needs [2, 12]. In addition, patients seek for their information needs through search engines. Previous studies have reported that search engines don’t always support information needs of patients [11]. Consequently, people seek information on disease specific online health communities (OHCs) [9]. But the risk of propagating misinformation still exists because existing OHCs do not provide an infrastructure to help patients find relevant and trustworthy information [8, 19].Existing patient focused health search engines and health recommender systems can accommodate better support of patients’ information needs by providing them trustworthy resources. However, current PHRS are personalized to patients’ interests and so information provided by these layperson-oriented systems is rather general [5, 6]. In fact, previous study has shown that a patient’s personal knowledge about their disease becomes more sophisticated over the course of disease [6, 7]. Therefore, our principal motivation is to fill this gap in current PHRS, by investigating ways to suggest individualized health information that not only adapts to patients’ current information needs but also patients’ knowledge-level across the disease trajectory. The health materials recommended at the level of patients’ knowledge will not only help them engage with materials but also help in informed decision making and self management [16].