Using Traditional Chinese Medicine Ideas as a Mechanism to Engage People in Health Awareness

Donglei Song, Yu Xia, Rusi Wang and Hao Xu
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Donglei Song: College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Yu Xia: College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Rusi Wang: Mathematics School, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Hao Xu: College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: Improving health awareness is essential to health and healthcare sustainability. How to arouse attention to the health of people and encourage them to attend to healthcare progress so that we can reduce the costs of promoting healthcare by achieving more with less effort remains to be explored. In this paper, we provide a simplified health management app, called iTongue, with a basis in traditional Chinese medicine. People use iTongue to take pictures of their tongues to have a general idea of their health. We realize automated tongue image diagnosis using machine learning techniques to establish the relationship between the tongue image features and the cold or hot ZHENG (traditional Chinese medicine syndrome) in traditional Chinese medicine by learning through examples and assisting people to engage in health management. The results show that health management interaction based on traditional Chinese medicine has a positive influence on improving people’s attention to their health, encouraging them to participate in health management activities and develop the habit of caring about their health over the long term. In the future, we could consider using this kind of traditional Chinese medicine idea as a means of publicity to engage people in healthcare and to assist healthcare sustainability development.

Keywords: health management; healthcare sustainability; traditional Chinese medicine; tongue diagnosis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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