Eye Knowledge Network: A Social Network for the Eye Care Community

Abstract

Eye Knowledge Network (EKN) aims at creating a complete framework for collaboration and interaction between eye care professionals. EKN exploits resources and concepts of Web 2.0 to set up a continuously growing “virtual library” of multimedia data (images, videos, animations) and an interacting set of tools for supporting the discussion. Being the clinical case media the pinning point for the medical research and application, the social network is oriented to the creation of specific discussion threads and to develop connections based on similarity and analogies. All the media and the discussions are tagged by the system which incorporates an ontology specialized in medical and eye care field and that provides smart search and a recommendation system. An hybrid recommendation approach, both content-based and collaborative, builds a multicriteria ranking system of objects and users. The media upload to the library allows the flexibility to dynamically interact with the data representations pointing out regions and highlighting areas of interest.