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Ubiquitous Multicriteria Clinic Recommendation System

  • Mobile Systems
  • Published:
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Advancements in information, communication, and sensor technologies have led to new opportunities in medical care and education. Patients in general prefer visiting the nearest clinic, attempt to avoid waiting for treatment, and have unequal preferences for different clinics and doctors. Therefore, to enable patients to compare multiple clinics, this study proposes a ubiquitous multicriteria clinic recommendation system. In this system, patients can send requests through their cell phones to the system server to obtain a clinic recommendation. Once the patient sends this information to the system, the system server first estimates the patient’s speed according to the detection results of a global positioning system. It then applies a fuzzy integer nonlinear programming–ordered weighted average approach to assess four criteria and finally recommends a clinic with maximal utility to the patient. The proposed methodology was tested in a field experiment, and the experimental results showed that it is advantageous over two existing methods in elevating the utilities of recommendations. In addition, such an advantage was shown to be statistically significant.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Feng Chia University, Tacihung City, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Toly Chen

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  1. Toly Chen
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Correspondence to Toly Chen.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mobile Systems

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Chen, T. Ubiquitous Multicriteria Clinic Recommendation System. J Med Syst 40, 113 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-016-0469-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-016-0469-6

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