A food recommender for patients in a care facility

  • Authors:
  • Toon De Pessemier;Simon Dooms;Luc Martens

  • Affiliations:
  • iMinds-WiCa-Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium;iMinds-WiCa-Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium;iMinds-WiCa-Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Recommender systems
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

In this research, a food recommendation strategy for patients in a care facility is proposed. Since many of these patients cannot express their personal preferences, a recommender system can assist the caregivers in the selection of the menu items that match the patients' preferences. Recommendations are generated based on three information sources: explicit ratings for menu items, implicit feedback based on the patient's eating behavior and the amount of food that was eaten, and inferred preferences for the ingredients of the menu items. In addition, monitoring the amount of food that was eaten by each patient can provide insights into the optimal amount of each menu item that has to be served to each patient. Furthermore, monitoring food consumption allows to detect irregularities in the eating behavior of the patient, which can be a symptom of illness.