Discovering Personal Behavioral Rules in a Health Management System

Designing interactive systems that support health management among chronic care patients has become a research interest in the HCI community. These systems are meant to allow patients to act as normal people, without letting illnesses affect their everyday lives. In particular, various diary and logging applications have been developed to allow people to record, monitor and visualize their daily behaviors and the progress of their disease. One critical aspect of personal health management that such systems do not yet sufficiently support is the diversity of health behaviors among individuals. As previous research indicates, individuals vary greatly in how they manage their health and what “works for them”. Discovering personal behavioral rules is critical for wellness and for health maintenance. Technologies that encourage and promote personal rule discovery are thus needed. In this paper, we present our ongoing research on developing such a system, and discuss preliminary findings from an initial user study.