I-wellness: A hybrid case-based framework for personalized wellness therapy

In today's world, increasing awareness on personal wellness has shifted the concept of health from treatment of diseases to prevention of health problems. This is actually related to complementary and alternative medicine treatment known as “wellness”. As defined by the National Wellness Institute Inc. in United States of America (USA), “wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices towards a more successful existence”. In typical wellness approach, the wellness operators namely therapist, masseur, psychiatrist and wellness specialist are among the experts in wellness consultation. They are qualified experts in analyzing a person's wellness condition and matching a suitable wellness therapy for him/her. This typical consultation approach is time consuming and inconvenient for consumers and wellness operators who have hectic daily schedules. Therefore, an intelligent wellness recommendation system is necessary to analyze users' wellness condition and recommend suitable wellness therapy for them. One of the solutions to typical consultation is to apply a knowledge-based approach that enables quick and reliable decision making process. A hybrid case-based framework is proposed to solve the recommendation tasks for personalized wellness therapy recommendation and monitoring.