Health Assistance for Immigrants - Smart Information Systems: Computational Intelligence for Real-Life Applications - page 77

such asGermany, where roughly 20%of the population has an immigrant background
[ 5 , 38 ] and consequently, a potentially large group of citizens may not able to under-
stand the main language of the host nation.
Apart fromproviding users easy access to health-related content, an equally impor-
tant approach to support people in living a healthier life is to actively educate them.
In the context of food consumption, this is done via nutrition facts labels that are
legally required on most packaged food. Although different regulations exists in
individual countries on what has to be written on these labels, they serve as guide-
lines on different targets for nutrients such as energy, protein, or fat. A study on the
effects of these nutrition fact claims on consumer product evaluation is presented by
Keller et al. [ 19 ]. Although providing overviews of ingredients helps raising aware-
ness about individual eating habits, the share of people who cook their own food is
declining. At the same time, we can observe a significant growth of the ready-meals
market. Van der Horst et al. [ 42 ] study the association between overweight, cook-
ing skills, and ready meal consumptions. Their study illustrates the importance to
actively promote healthy food preparation.
The third important aspect of healthy living is frequent physical exercises. Various
studies (e.g., [ 44 ]) report a direct connection between physical activities and personal
well-being. Regular physical activity is a resource for body and soul [ 39 ]. On the one
hand, a physically active lifestyle can contribute to reduce the risk of cardiovascular
diseases, obesity, and complaints of the muscular and skeletal system [ 1 ]. On the
other hand, regular physical exercise can reinforce the mental well-being. The World
Health Organization describes lack of exercise as the fourth important risk factor for
mortality [ 46 ]. They recommend adults a medium intense activity of 2, 5h/week. As
mentioned before though, lack of physical activity is one of the main consequences
of a sedentary lifestyle.
In order to address the issues mentioned above, we introduce a health assistant
for immigrants [ 30 ] that consists of two subsystems, namely a multilingual health
information service and a prevention service. Figure 3.1 illustrates the connection
between these individual components. Combined, the services are a comprehensive
approach to support people for healthier living by giving them information about
health topics, supporting healthier eating, and getting enough exercises.
The multilingual health information service [ 29 ] guarantees personalized access
to professionally created healthcare content. The system, in the remainder of this
chapter referred to as GID, enables immigrants to inform themselves about med-
ical conditions and preventive health services. By providing them with avail-
able information in the language of their choice, GID helps those people who
have language-related difficulties in understanding their physicians. Information is
adapted based on users' personal context such as pre-existing medical conditions
and their location.
The prevention service, referred to as PS, consists of a cooking assistant and a
virtual trainer. The cooking assistant provides the user a wide range of different
recipes and nutrition information about different meals. There is also a possibility to
personalize the recipe search with the aid of different criteria. The trainer supports
the physical activity of the user with three different activity sessions.