User-centered ubiquitous multi-agent model for e-health web-based recommender applications development

Abstract

Despite recent progress in e-health system development, there are still significant problems in health service recommendation processes such as searching for healthcare specialists or medical appointments in hospitals and healthcare centers. Also, there are not so many e-health user-centered systems that provide assistance and good recommendations to users at any time in the location they are situated. The aim of this paper is to propose a model based on the integration of several approaches such as: ubiquitous computing, adaptive and recommender systems, web-based and user-centered multi-agent systems, and ontologies. In addition, an e-health web-based system prototype was built based on this model adopting mechanisms to search for information from anywhere and anytime, thus providing ubiquity characteristics. Finally, we present the validation of the U-MAS-HEALTH system by means of a case study. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.