Using the Past to Inform the Future

In this ongoing project, we explore the benefit of seeing analogous past situations for informed chronic disease management decision-making. Decision-making based on an assessment of one’s current situation and experience is essential in chronic disease self-management, such as T1D self-management.

Motivation: By showing individuals with T1D similar past situations including their future progression, technologies could support patients in making informed decisions, ultimately improving their health outcomes.

Problem: T1D self-management decision-making is particularly difficult as effective management depends on a multitude of interdependent factors, including food intake, stress, and insulin use. While most individuals with T1D rely on their experiences for in the moment decision-making, human memory is often limited and biased. This may lead to misinformed decision-making and poorer health outcomes.

Goal: Create a digital health technology and VA solution that allows an interactive and personalized search for  similar past situations to support patients’ in situ decision-making based on facts rather than memory.

Approach: In this project, we develop applications that find the most similar past situations based on the multitude of factors involved in a patient’s self-management. To account for individual differences regarding the importance and effect of factors affecting a patient’s blood glucose levels, we allow patients to adapt the weights given to factors by our algorithm.

Interested in this Project or an idea related to this project?

Please contact Clara-Maria Barth

Open Master Project:

Open Master Thesis

This would be a thesis either on design of a mobile application or implementation of a mobile application. For more details please contact cbarth@ifi.uzh.ch