TPLUFIB-WEB: A fuzzy linguistic Web system to help in the treatment of low back pain problems

• We present TPLUFIB-WEB, a fuzzy linguistic Web system specialized in the physiotherapy field.
• It uses a recommender system to provide personalized treatments to patients with low back pain and any advices to prevent it.
• This system becomes a useful application that can be used to reduce the economic impact of the low back pain problem, help professionals to assist patients and inform users on how to prevent the low back pain too.
• To build trust among users the system satisfies important Web quality standards.

Low back pain affects a large proportion of the adult population at some point in their lives and has a major economic and social impact. To soften this impact, one possible solution is to make use of Information and Communication Technologies. Recommender systems, which exploit past behaviors and user similarities to predict possible user needs, have already been introduced in several health fields. In this paper, we present TPLUFIB-WEB, a fuzzy linguistic Web system that uses a recommender system to provide personalized exercises to patients with low back pain problems and to offer recommendations for their prevention. This system may be useful to reduce the economic impact of low back pain, help professionals to assist patients, and inform users on low back pain prevention measures. TPLUFIB-WEB satisfies the Web quality standards proposed by the Health On the Net Foundation (HON), Official College of Physicians of Barcelona, and Health Quality Agency of the Andalusian Regional Government, endorsing the health information provided and warranting the trust of users.