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