Abstract
As rapid progress of population aging and strong interest in health, the demand for new healthcare service is increasing. Until now healthcare service has provided post treatment by face-to-face manner. But according to related researches, proactive treatment is resulted to be more effective for preventing diseases. Particularly, the existing healthcare services have limitations in preventing and managing metabolic syndrome such a lifestyle disease, because the cause of metabolic syndrome is related to life habit. As the advent of ubiquitous technology, patients with the metabolic syndrome can improve life habit such as poor eating habits and physical inactivity without the constraints of time and space through u-healthcare service. Therefore, lots of researches for u-healthcare service focus on providing the personalized healthcare service for preventing and managing metabolic syndrome. For example, Kim et al.(2010) have proposed a healthcare model for providing the customized calories and rates of nutrition factors by analyzing the user's preference in foods. Lee et al.(2010) have suggested the customized diet recommendation service considering the basic information, vital signs, family history of diseases and food preferences to prevent and manage coronary heart disease. And, Kim and Han(2004) have demonstrated that the web-based nutrition counseling has effects on food intake and lipids of patients with hyperlipidemia. However, the existing researches for u-healthcare service focus on providing the predefined one-way u-healthcare service. Thus, users have a tendency to easily lose interest in improving life habit. To solve such a problem of u-healthcare service, this research suggests a u-healthcare recommender system which is based on collaborative filtering principle and social network. This research follows the principle of collaborative filtering, but preserves local networks (consisting of small group of similar neighbors) for target users to recommend context aware healthcare services. Our research is consisted of the following five steps. In the first step, user profile is created using the usage history data for improvement in life habit. And then, a set of users known as neighbors is formed by the degree of similarity between the users, which is calculated by Pearson correlation coefficient. In the second step, the target user obtains service information from his/her neighbors. In the third step, recommendation list of top-N service is generated for the target user. Making the list, we use the multi-filtering based on user's psychological context information and body mass index (BMI) information for the detailed recommendation. In the fourth step, the personal information, which is the history of the usage service, is updated when the target user uses the recommended service. In the final step, a social network is reformed to continually provide qualified recommendation. For example, the neighbors may be excluded from the social network if the target user doesn't like the recommendation list received from them. That is, this step updates each user's neighbors locally, so maintains the updated local neighbors always to give context aware recommendation in real time. The characteristics of our research as follows. First, we develop the u-healthcare recommender system for improving life habit such as poor eating habits and physical inactivity. Second, the proposed recommender system uses autonomous collaboration, which enables users to prevent dropping and not to lose user's interest in improving life habit. Third, the reformation of the social network is automated to maintain the quality of recommendation. Finally, this research has implemented a mobile prototype system using JAVA and Microsoft Access2007 to recommend the prescribed foods and exercises for chronic disease prevention, which are provided by A university medical center. This research intends to prevent diseases such as chronic illnesses and to improve user's lifestyle through providing context aware and personalized food and exercise services with the help of similar users'experience and knowledge. We expect that the user of this system can improve their life habit with the help of handheld mobile smart phone, because it uses autonomous collaboration to arouse interest in healthcare.
인구의 고령화 및 건강에 대한 관심이 증가됨에 따라 유헬스케어 서비스는 발병 후 관리관점에서 발병 전의 예방 관점으로 그 목적이 점차 이동하고 있다. 그러나 기존의 유헬스케어 서비스는 원격진료 차원의 의료 서비스 성격이 강하여, 만성 성인병과 같은 대사 증후군을 예방 및 관리하기에는 한계가 있을 뿐만 아니라, 관리자 중심의 단방향 서비스를 제공함으로 인해 사용들이 중도에 이용을 포기하는 비율이 높았다. 이와 같은 문제를 해결하기 위하여, 본 연구에서는 사회 네트워크를 이용한 사용자 기반 유헬스케어 서비스 추천 시스템을 제안하였으며, 실세계에서 유헬스케어 서비스 추천 시스템의 활용 가능성을 제시하기 위하여 실제 의료원에서 대사 증후군 예방 및 관리를 위해 처방한 식단 및 운동 정보를 기반으로 유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경에서 적용가능한 시스템을 구현하였다. 본 연구에서 제안한 시스템은 사용자가 선호하지 않는 서비스가 네트워크를 통해 확산될 가능성을 낮추는 동시에 추천의 신뢰성 제고를 위해 네이버들이 이용한 서비스를 공유함으로써 전체적인 추천 품질을 높인다. 즉, 사용자의 식습관 및 운동습관 등과 같은 생활습관을 개선하기 위하여 사회 네트워크를 활용함으로써 사용자간의 자율협업을 통한 개인화된 추천이 가능하다. 따라서 본 연구에서 제안하는 유헬스케어 서비스 추천 시스템은 생활습관 개선을 위하여 사용자에게 적합한 식단 및 운동을 제공하고, 생활습관의 개선을 통해 만성 성인병과 같은 대사증후군을 사전에 예방할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.