Continuous health interface event retrieval

Abstract

Knowing the state of our health at every moment in time is critical for advances in health science. Using data obtained outside an episodic clinical setting is the first step towards building a continuous health estimation system. In this paper, we explore a system that allows users to combine events and data streams from different sources and retrieve complex biological events, such as cardiovascular volume overload, using measured lifestyle events. These complex events, which have been explored in biomedical literature and which we call interface events, have a direct causal impact on the relevant biological systems; they are the interface through which the lifestyle events influence our health. We retrieve the interface events from existing events and data streams by encoding domain knowledge using the event operator language. The interface events can then be utilized to provide a continuous estimate of the biological variables relevant to the user's health state. The event-based framework also makes it easier to estimate which event is causally responsible for a particular change in the individual's health state.