Recommender Systems for Health Information Web Sites

Master Specialization: Information Systems
Topic Aproval date: 20/03/09
Orientation: research

Student: Miguel Seguidó Font
Thesis advisor(s): Carles Farré
Contact: farre at lsi.upc.edu



The SALUS Project (CYTED 508RT0361 - ) embraces a set of activities focused on the definition and  construction of a Consultation and Recommendation Platform for Health Information Web Sites. This platform can be conceived as a Web portal with adaptive access to different users depending on their cultural level and regional peculiarities. To contribute to that endeavour, this thesis pursues three main goals. First, to provide a comprehensive and depth review of the state of the art on Recommender Systems(*). Second, to evaluate which existing solution matches best with the requirements of a Health Information Web Site. And third, to propose a road-map for the adoption/implementation of a particular recommender-system solution for a Health Information Web Site.

(*) Recommender systems form a specific type of information filtering systems form a specific type of information filtering technique that attempts to present information items (movies, music, books, news, images, web pages, etc.) that are likely of interest to the user. Typically, a recommender system compares the user's profile to some reference characteristics, and seeks to predict the 'rating' that a user would give to an item they had not yet considered. (From Wikipedia)