3,118 research outputs found
Analyzing recommender systems for health promotion using a multidisciplinary taxonomy: A scoping review
Background: Recommender systems are information retrieval systems that provide users with relevant items
(e.g., through messages). Despite their extensive use in the e-commerce and leisure domains, their application in
healthcare is still in its infancy. These systems may be used to create tailored health interventions, thus reducing
the cost of healthcare and fostering a healthier lifestyle in the population.
Objective: This paper identifies, categorizes, and analyzes the existing knowledge in terms of the literature
published over the past 10 years on the use of health recommender systems for patient interventions. The aim of
this study is to understand the scientific evidence generated about health recommender systems, to identify any
gaps in this field to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) (namely, “Ensure healthy
lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”), and to suggest possible reasons for these gaps as well as to
propose some solutions.
Methods: We conducted a scoping review, which consisted of a keyword search of the literature related to health
recommender systems for patients in the following databases: ScienceDirect, PsycInfo, Association for Computing
Machinery, IEEExplore, and Pubmed. Further, we limited our search to consider only English-lan-guage journal
articles published in the last 10 years. The reviewing process comprised three researchers who filtered the results
simultaneously. The quantitative synthesis was conducted in parallel by two researchers, who classified each
paper in terms of four aspects—the domain, the methodological and procedural aspects, the health promotion
theoretical factors and behavior change theories, and the technical aspects—using a new multidisciplinary
taxonomy.
Results: Nineteen papers met the inclusion criteria and were included in the data analysis, for which thirty-three
features were assessed. The nine features associated with the health promotion theoretical factors and behavior
change theories were not observed in any of the selected studies, did not use principles of tailoring, and did not
assess (cost)-effectiveness.
Discussion: Health recommender systems may be further improved by using relevant behavior change strategies
and by implementing essential characteristics of tailored interventions. In addition, many of the features required
to assess each of the domain aspects, the methodological and procedural aspects, and technical aspects
were not reported in the studies.
Conclusions: The studies analyzed presented few evidence in support of the positive effects of using health recommender
systems in terms of cost-effectiveness and patient health outcomes. This is why future studies should
ensure that all the proposed features are covered in our multidisciplinary taxonomy, including integration with
electronic health records and the incorporation of health promotion theoretical factors and behavior change
theories. This will render those studies more useful for policymakers since they will cover all aspects needed to
determine their impact toward meeting SDG3.European Union's Horizon 2020 No 68112
Opening the Black Box: Explaining the Process of Basing a Health Recommender System on the I-Change Behavioral Change Model
Recommender systems are gaining traction in healthcare because they can tailor recommendations
based on users' feedback concerning their appreciation of previous health-related messages. However,
recommender systems are often not grounded in behavioral change theories, which may further increase
the effectiveness of their recommendations. This paper's objective is to describe principles for designing
and developing a health recommender system grounded in the I-Change behavioral change model that
shall be implemented through a mobile app for a smoking cessation support clinical trial. We built upon
an existing smoking cessation health recommender system that delivered motivational messages through a
mobile app. A group of experts assessed how the system may be improved to address the behavioral change
determinants of the I-Change behavioral change model. The resulting system features a hybrid recommender
algorithm for computer tailoring smoking cessation messages. A total of 331 different motivational messages
were designed using 10 health communication methods. The algorithm was designed to match 58 message
characteristics to each user pro le by following the principles of the I-Change model and maintaining the
bene ts of the recommender system algorithms. The mobile app resulted in a streamlined version that aimed
to improve the user experience, and this system's design bridges the gap between health recommender
systems and the use of behavioral change theories. This article presents a novel approach integrating
recommender system technology, health behavior technology, and computer-tailored technology. Future
researchers will be able to build upon the principles applied in this case study.European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant 68112
Recommender Systems
The ongoing rapid expansion of the Internet greatly increases the necessity
of effective recommender systems for filtering the abundant information.
Extensive research for recommender systems is conducted by a broad range of
communities including social and computer scientists, physicists, and
interdisciplinary researchers. Despite substantial theoretical and practical
achievements, unification and comparison of different approaches are lacking,
which impedes further advances. In this article, we review recent developments
in recommender systems and discuss the major challenges. We compare and
evaluate available algorithms and examine their roles in the future
developments. In addition to algorithms, physical aspects are described to
illustrate macroscopic behavior of recommender systems. Potential impacts and
future directions are discussed. We emphasize that recommendation has a great
scientific depth and combines diverse research fields which makes it of
interests for physicists as well as interdisciplinary researchers.Comment: 97 pages, 20 figures (To appear in Physics Reports
An Ontology-Based Recommender System with an Application to the Star Trek Television Franchise
Collaborative filtering based recommender systems have proven to be extremely
successful in settings where user preference data on items is abundant.
However, collaborative filtering algorithms are hindered by their weakness
against the item cold-start problem and general lack of interpretability.
Ontology-based recommender systems exploit hierarchical organizations of users
and items to enhance browsing, recommendation, and profile construction. While
ontology-based approaches address the shortcomings of their collaborative
filtering counterparts, ontological organizations of items can be difficult to
obtain for items that mostly belong to the same category (e.g., television
series episodes). In this paper, we present an ontology-based recommender
system that integrates the knowledge represented in a large ontology of
literary themes to produce fiction content recommendations. The main novelty of
this work is an ontology-based method for computing similarities between items
and its integration with the classical Item-KNN (K-nearest neighbors)
algorithm. As a study case, we evaluated the proposed method against other
approaches by performing the classical rating prediction task on a collection
of Star Trek television series episodes in an item cold-start scenario. This
transverse evaluation provides insights into the utility of different
information resources and methods for the initial stages of recommender system
development. We found our proposed method to be a convenient alternative to
collaborative filtering approaches for collections of mostly similar items,
particularly when other content-based approaches are not applicable or
otherwise unavailable. Aside from the new methods, this paper contributes a
testbed for future research and an online framework to collaboratively extend
the ontology of literary themes to cover other narrative content.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables, minor revision
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