Fuzzy simulation of human behaviour in the health-e-living system

Abstract

This chapter shows an application of fuzzy set theory to preventive health support systems where adherence to medical treatment is an important measure to promote health and reduce health care costs. Preventive health care information technology systems design include ensuring adherence to treatment through Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAI). Determining the timing of the intervention and the appropriate intervention strategy are two of the main difficulties facing current systems. In this work, a JITAI system called Health-e-living (Heli) was developed for a group of patients with type-2 diabetes. During the development stages of Heli it was verified that the state of each user is fuzzy and it is difficult to get the right moment to send motivational message without being annoying. A fuzzy formula is proposed to measure the adherence of patients to their goals. As the adherence measurement needed more data, it was introduce the DisCo software toolset for formal specifications, the modelling of human behaviour and health action process approach (HAPA) to simulate the interactions between users of the Heli system. The effectiveness of interventions is essential in any JITAI system and the proposed formula allows Heli to send motivational messages in correspondence with the status of each user as to evaluate the efficiency of any intervention strategy.