Overview
This project aims to contribute to this area of research by implementing recommender systems that support healthcare professionals' decision-making processes. The project will use data from a rehabilitation clinic in Switzerland that cares for persons with spinal cord injury (SCI). Our system will analyze data from the first rehabilitation, which happens after acute care and lasts six to eight months. SCI is damage to the spine that leads to irreversible physical impairment, also known as paraplegia and tetraplegia. First rehabilitation is designed to support persons with SCI to get used to their new condition, and to give them the tools to make them as independent as possible. The healthcare professionals involved during this phase include physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, logopedists, and psychologists, among other therapists.
This project is led by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU). HSLU is responsible for designing and implementing explainable methods in recommendations that will be integrated into the beta version of SmartRehab. In addition, this project collaborates with the University of Lucerne (UniLU), health professionals at the Swiss Paraplegic Center (SPC), and the Swiss Paraplegic Research (SPF) to comprehensively analyze the use case and thoroughly test and provide feedback on the system developed. The objective is to provide feedback on the system and ensure it is functional and user-friendly. The project's ultimate goal is to deploy a prototype of SmartRehab that can optimize medical decision-making in SCI rehabilitation. It will translate into optimizing patient functioning and reducing the cost of services. The project also considers rigorous ethical considerations. As a result, it provides a solid foundation for expanding current solutions by establishing a standard for using health recommender systems (HRSs) for rehabilitation services.
