A recommendation system for assisting devices in long-term care insurance

It is very important to support the elderly with disability ageing in place. Assisting devices can help them to live independently in their community; however, they have to be used appropriately to meet care needs. This study develops an assisting device recommendation system for the beneficiaries of long-term care insurance that include algorithms to decide the most appropriate type of assisting device for beneficiaries. We used long-term care (LTC) insurance data for grade assessment including 8,084 beneficiaries from July 2015 to June 2016. In addition, we collected standard care plans for assisting devices, that power-assessors made, considering their performance and ability that could subsequently be matched with grade assessment data. We used a decision-tree model in data-mining to develop the model. Finally, we developed 15 algorithms for recommending assisting devices. The findings might be useful in evidence-based care planning for assisting devices and can contribute to enhancing independence and safety in LTC.