FWF - Human-Centered - Human-Centered Adaptive Approaches for Health Information

Wider research context / theoretical framework. Consumer Health Information Systems (CHIS) are indispensable in healthcare. User-centered evidence-based medical information for pa­tients positively influences therapy success, behavior, and cause-effect comprehension. lmproved health literacy allows patients to accept medical advice and share decision-making. lt helps to pre­vent misconceptions, mitigate cognitive biases, and improves doctor-patient communication. Hypotheses / research questions / objectives. Today, CHIS exist from posters and brochures to popular science publications and media reports. Also, (self-)curated medical information is abun­dant on the Internet in different forms, e.g., discussions, question-answering, and commercially. Information is generally provided statically, i.e., the same medical content is presented to everyone. However, patients vary regarding previous knowledge and information needs, e.g., depending on gender, age, personality, perception, etc. Thus, our main research question and objective is: How can evidence-based medical knowledge, cognitive-psychological mechanisms, and novel interac­tive data visualizations be combined to form adaptive and interactive consumer health information systems that take account of individual health information needs, and increase health literacy by providing a reliable source of medical knowledge? Approach/ methods. Based on an analysis of existing CHIS, cognitive foundations, and visu­alizations of medical and consumer data, we research innovative concepts for advanced interactive, adaptive, personalized and visual CHIS (called A+CHIS). We implement the new concepts in a testbed system, and evaluate them in stationary and mobile environments for effectiveness and eff iciency. Level of originality / innovation. The cutting-edge research of our project lies in introducing multi-dimensional adaptivity to the information provision for health information consumer, aiming at full understanding of the meaning of the provided medical content. We contribute to evidence-based medical information processing, user adaption, interactive visual information displays, and cognitive psychology.