Online Health Recommendation System: A Social Support Perspective

Online Health Communities (OHC) aim to support patients through offer them the opportunities to exchange support with others. However, patients have difficulties and problems locating expertise within the online health communities. In this regard, this study aims to create a patient recommender system to help users locate those with relevant experience and similar health status. Specifically, we aim to leverage the type of online social support users seek to determine the patient health status to build a patient status prediction model. Building the model will help create a peer recommendation system for online support group members to easily locate peers and build a sustainable online health community. Building this type of recommendation system will help patients to effectively interact with other patients who have same health status. Moreover, it will help online health communities in improving the services provided, which in turn will be reflected positively on patient’s health status

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FRIENDHSIP TIES IN THE ONLINE HEALTH FORUM BASED ON EXPONENTIAL RANDOM GRAPH MODEL

The increasingly booming online social networks promote the development of online health forum. People tend to solve kinds of health issues through the Internet. However, it is still unclear what the main characteristics of friendship networks are and how the users’ attribution affect the friendship ties establishment in the online health forum. This study uses the Exponential Random Graph Model to examine the characteristics of friendship networks and explores the effect of user attributions on the friendship ties establishment in the online health forum. The results indicated that friendship networks exhibit transitivity characteristics; meanwhile, user homophily, in terms of social identify, social activeness, age as well as geographical location have positive effects on the friendship ties establishment. The study could help patients uncover the underline mechanisms of friendship networks formation, as well shed light on how to facilitate users to make friends and finally promote prosperity effectively for the online health platform