A Personalized Food Recommendation System for Psychiatric Patients

The objectives of this research were to design and develop a personalized food recommendation system for psychiatric patients. The proposed system could be used as a tool for staff in hospitals with no nutritionists. The research methodology was based on System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) concept. First, collect patient data in the provinces of Nakhon Ratchasima, Chaiyaphum, Buriram, and Surin and determine the relationship between personal factors, e.g., gender, age, weight, height, waistline, blood type, and life elements. These factors have been taken into account with three mental disorders, namely schizophrenia, depressive, and mental and behavior disorders due to use of alcohol. Patients suffering from these three disorders must be given psychiatric medications that affect their appetite and nutritional needs differently. Finally, the IF-THEN rules were established and applied as conditions for the personalized food recommendation. The proposed system was developed as an easy-to-use web application. The results of the usability assessment indicated that the proposed system was appropriate for recommending personalized foods to psychiatric patients. Furthermore, the user provided the overall satisfaction results of the proposed system at a very good level. This system could be applied to other psychiatric hospitals or network hospitals in the community that are responsible for following up and treating psychiatric patients, but there were neither doctors nor nutritionists to recommend.