Personal health records: retrieving contextual information with Google Custom Search

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Health Informatics
• Medical Informatics

Background:

• Ubiquitous healthcare necessitates comprehensive personal health records (PHRs).
• Crucial contextual health information is often missing from traditional PHRs.
• External contextual data is vital for accurate diagnosis, treatment, and health maintenance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a dual cellphone-and-Web-based PHR system.
• To integrate external contextual information into PHRs.
• To leverage ontologies and web search for enhanced health records.

Main Methods:

• Development of a dual cellphone-and-Web-based PHR system.
• Utilization of ontologies to identify relevant online health and environmental information.
• Integration with Google Custom Search API for data retrieval.

Main Results:

• A framework combining a health-and-environment ontology with Google Custom Search API was developed.
• The system can retrieve relevant external contextual information for PHR entries.
• Demonstrated feasibility of enriching PHRs with internet-sourced contextual data.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework enhances ubiquitous personal health records by incorporating external contextual information.
• This approach supports more informed healthcare decisions by providing a richer health context.
• Future work can expand on integrating diverse contextual data sources for comprehensive health management.