An Overview of Recommendation Techniques and Their Applications in Healthcare

With the increasing amount of information on the internet,recommendation system(RS)has been utilized in a variety of fields as an efficient tool to overcome information overload.In recent years,the application of RS for health has become a growing research topic due to its tremendous advantages in providing appropriate recommendations and helping people make the right decisions relating to their health.This paper aims at presenting a comprehensive review of typical recommendation techniques and their applications in the field of healthcare.More concretely,an overview is provided on three famous recommendation techniques,namely,content-based,collaborative filtering(CF)-based,and hybrid methods.Next,we provide a snapshot of five application scenarios about health RS,which are dietary recommendation,lifestyle recommendation,training recommendation,decision-making for patients and physicians,and disease-related prediction.Finally,some key challenges are given with clear justifications to this new and booming field.