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The Internet offers a new chance for health professionals to reach population groups not usually reached through traditional information channels, for example, migrants. Criticism has, however, been raised that most health information on the Internet is not easy to read and lacks cultural sensitivity. We developed an Internet-based bilingual health assistant especially for Turkish migrants in Germany, tested its acceptance, and evaluated its usability in a participatory research design with families with and without Turkish migrant background. The interactive health assistant covered the following: nutrition, physical activity, overweight, diabetes, as well as pregnancy and pregnancy support. The idea of an Internet-based health assistant was generally accepted by all participants of the evaluation study, as long as it would be incorporated in existing appliances, such as smartphones. The bilingual nature of the assistant was welcomed especially by first generation migrants, but migrant participants also indicated that not all health information needed to be made available in a culture-specific way. The participants were least satisfied with the nutrition component, which they felt should include recipes and ingredients from the culture of origin, as well as specific aspects of food preparation.

Our personal health should be one of our main concerns, but unfortunately, due to modern lifestyle, far too many people ignore their own well-being. Consequently, methodologies need to be developed that assist us in living a healthier life. In this chapter, we present a health assistance system for immigrants. The system consists of two parts: A health information system that allows users to search for health information using natural language queries composed of multiple languages and a prevention service that assists users in their cooking routine and motivates them to perform frequent physical exercises. The information system uses NLP techniques to understand the user query, matches it to a health ontology we developed, and offers the user a comprehensive answer. The prevention service is embedded in a smart home environment. We present the technical details of both systems and show a user study to demonstrate that the system works well in providing highly relevant health information.