Decision-Making System

A Decision Support System (DSS) is software that assists its user in taking optimized decisions involving complex situations often from a large amount of input variables.
It is designed to be a direct aid in choosing and juding the different available options to solve a problem. The DSS can be considered as the intelligence of NESTORE.

The DSS processes data from multiple data sources, such as the monitoring system to be able to characterize users' behaviour, the users' profile to be able to characterize their likings and behaviours, and the coaching plans designed by the NESTORE experts. By analysing these data sources, the DSS is able to suggest tailored coaching plans taking into consideration the users' routines, behaviours, and preferences.

During the execution of the coaching plans, the DSS provides the NESTORE e-Coach with tailored feedback based on integrated data sources encompassing the four target domains. For action planning, the DSS helps users scheduling the proposed coaching activities into their calendar, matching their availability with context requirements. Finally, the DSS helps them to adapt coaching activities to their needs and preferences, e.g., lowering the intensity of physical activity if the perceived required effort is too high.

In short, the DSS can be understood as a model to structure knowledge and select personalized and context-aware coaching plans for ageing individuals. It takes advantage of both mHealth and cloud solutions to perform a multiple-stage processing of the data generated by users at different timestamps to provide different levels of feedback and user interaction. This allows NESTORE e-Coach to dynamically adapt to users' profiles and needs.

Related publications:

• A Decision Support System to Propose Coaching Plans for Seniors (doi: 10.1109/CBMS.2019.00123)
• Dynamic Decision Support System for Personalised Coaching to Support Active Ageing (link)