HELPeR

Welcome to the Health e-Librarian with Personalized Recommender (HELPeR)!

As the Internet has become a prominent source of health information to guide patients’ decision-making and self-management activities, patients strongly indicate they need navigational support to locate appropriate information on the Internet. The overall goal of our project is to build and implement a “Health E-Librarian with Personalized Recommendations (HELPeR)”, a personalized digital librarian that provides individualized, reliable online information relevant to the patient’s needs, interest and knowledge across the disease trajectory.

As a first step, we are now looking for participants who can help us to better understand the information needs and preferences of women with ovarian cancer and their family members. Help Us Now!

This is a collaborative project between the School of Nursing and the School of Computing and Information, University of Pittsburgh. This study is funded by the National Library of Medicine (1R01LM013038-01A1).

Aim One

Define user needs, preferences, and expectations for personalized health information.

Aim Two

Develop and evaluate the HELPeR system that is able to adapt to three types of individual user characteristics across the disease trajectory.

Aim Three

Conduct a field trial with ovarian patients to determine the acceptability and value of HELPeR in a real-world setting.