The Development of a Caring Recommender System for Family Caregivers of Persons with Mobility or Physical Disability

Abstract

This research and development aimed to develop a Caring Recommender System for Family Caregivers of Persons with Mobility or Physical Disability. There were four steps of the development: 1) a studying the feasibility and requirements for developing the recommender system by using a semi-structured interview with 15 purposive selected experts in nursing education, nursing administration, nursing practice, other health care practices, and health program development; 2) an creating the recommender system by applying technology, literature review, and data sets under the context of Thai society; 3) a testing the efficacy and satisfaction of the recommender system by using the efficacy and satisfaction assessment questionnaire with 60 purposive selected community nurses; and 4) an improving the version of the recommender system according to suggested. The qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

The research results founded that “the Caring Recommender System for Family Caregivers of Persons with Mobility or Physical Disability” is a health technique that was created to address the user performance to make their nursing care more easily. There are two components of the system: 1) the database management at the server and 2) the web-based presentation of the system, through the online recording of personal data of the family caregivers and health-related factors, the health risk analyzing by expert and neural network systems, and the recommendation providing for nurses to care for the family caregiver individually. After the trial, that the overall system efficiency was rated at very high level (M = 4.53, SD = .71) with the highest score of processing speed (M = 4.69, SD = .55), followed by accuracy (M = 4.51, SD = .69) and serviceability (M = 4.42, SD = .89), respectively. The overall system satisfaction was at a high level (M = 4.32, SD = .84), with content satisfaction more than presentation satisfaction (M = 4.45, SD = .72 and M = 4.22, SD = .96, respectively).

This research results reflect that “the Caring Recommender System for Family Caregivers of Persons with Mobility or Physical Disability” was useful in nursing planning for the care of family caregivers of persons with mobility or physical disabilities. Therefore, this system should be encouraged to be actively used by nurses, especially community nurses in order to improve quality of nursing care that is consistent with the problems and needs of each caregiver. This leads to the health of the family caregiver and the ability to maintain a role in caregiving for persons with mobility or physical disability.