An improved model for GUI design of mHealth context-aware applications

One of the main challenges of mobile health is using the smaller screens of mobile devices efficiently to show information supporting the health decision-making process. This research proposes a model that can be used to design and evaluate GUIs of mHealth context-aware applications with the aim of ensuring a proper distribution of key information among the screens. The proposed model is then evaluated based on the Health-ITUEM usability parameters description. The results of this evaluation show the attributes related to usability that have been enhanced

Towards a Holistic Approach to Designing Theory-based Mobile Health Interventions

Increasing evidence has shown that theory-based health behavior change interventions are more effective than non-theory-based ones. However, only a few segments of relevant studies were theory-based, especially the studies conducted by non-psychology researchers. On the other hand, many mobile health interventions, even those based on the behavioral theories, may still fail in the absence of a user-centered design process. The gap between behavioral theories and user-centered design increases the difficulty of designing and implementing mobile health interventions. To bridge this gap, we propose a holistic approach to designing theory-based mobile health interventions built on the existing theories and frameworks of three categories: (1) behavioral theories (e.g., the Social Cognitive Theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and the Health Action Process Approach), (2) the technological models and frameworks (e.g., the Behavior Change Techniques, the Persuasive System Design and Behavior Change Support System, and the Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions), and (3) the user-centered systematic approaches (e.g., the CeHRes Roadmap, the Wendel's Approach, and the IDEAS Model). This holistic approach provides researchers a lens to see the whole picture for developing mobile health interventions

Conception and realization of a mobile data acquisition and assistance application for intersession processes of patients in psychotherapeutic treatments at the example of the iOS platform

Conventional effectiveness and impact factor studies in psychotherapy research deal mainly with the therapy session per se. In contrast, a current trend is the increasing focus on patient advancement between therapy sessions, the so-called intersession processes. Traditionally, patient data is collected and evaluated in the form of paper questionnaires. In the context of intersession research, where this is done just prior to the therapy session, this means that their results often can not be properly included immediately afterwards. With the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, and wearables, mobile crowd sensing is a promising approach for capturing and analyzing large amounts of distributed data. This is attributed to the fact that modern mobile devices are equipped with unprecedented sensing, computing, and communication capabilities that allow them to perform complex tasks and provide countless possibilities for user interactions. Contemporaneous, in the course of digitization, both the topic of electronic health and mobile health (mHealth) are gaining increasingly more importance in the healthcare industry. Furthermore, simple and efficient interaction with mobile applications, as well as the exchange of information between the health care provider, here the therapist, and the patients, are essential aspects in applications in the mHealth field. Properly implemented, this can both improve and simplify the patient's treatment process. Within the scope of this thesis, in cooperation with the Institute of Psychology of the University of Klagenfurt, a mHealth application is developed, which allows to scientifically record intersession processes of patients in psychotherapeutic treatments. The patient automatically receives questionnaires via the mobile application, depending on therapy session dates and the results of previous evaluations, as well as manual interventions by the therapist. Thus, it should be significantly easier and more efficient for the therapist to collect and evaluate data on the patient's intersession processes and to prepare in advance for the upcoming therapy session

Enhancing physical activity coaching through personalized motivational strategies and self-adaptive goal-setting: development of self-adaptive processes in a monitoring and coaching smartphone application

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia BiomédicaThe rising age of the European population brings increased costs in healthcare mainly related to the management of chronic diseases. Regular physical activity has been shown to help in the prevention and control of disease risk. Mobile phones have provided promising and emergent ways of promoting healthy lifestyles, allowing real-time monitoring and coaching to be delivered at any time and any place. The presented work adds new features to the Activity Coach, an ambulatory feedback system that aims to encourage physical activity. The Integral of the Modulus of Body Acceleration (IMA) is the unit used as an estimate for energy expenditure. Although previous research demonstrated the potential of this system, results also showed that adherence drops after a few weeks. The primary goal of this research was to design, implement, and test adaptive goal-setting and personalized feedback strategies in order to encourage physical activity. Regarding the self-adaptive goal-setting feature, the goal for each day is defined automatically based on the physical activity performed at that day of the week since the beginning of the intervention. Hence, the intention is to help the user to increase or maintain his level of physical activity taking his daily routine as a reference. The second element added to the system regards motivational feedback messages, a key factor in interventions aiming at behavior change. Based on the levels of self-efficacy, stage-of-change, and daily activity, the user is assigned to one of the six pre-defined feedback strategies in the system. The content of the motivational cues depends on the selected feedback strategy. The evaluation of the system focused on providing better understandable and more accurate feedback to the user. To do so, we evaluated the challenge and attainability of the goals provided to the user with (1) data acquired during previous studies, and (2) newly gathered data from a single-subject study. As part of the evaluation, we translated IMA counts into ‘steps’, a commonly understandable measure for physical activity, comparing the data acquired from the Activity Coach sensor with a Fitbit, a commercially available pedometer. Although further tests with more subjects and different activities should be performed, we suggest that the default values set to the system are in agreement with the Goal-Setting Theory providing challenging and attainable goals. The results from this research will be used in future experiments using the Activity Coach and can be adapted to other ambulatory feedback systems regarding promotion of physical activity

A Data-informed Public Health Policy-Makers Platform

Hearing loss is a disease exhibiting a growing trend due to the number of factors, including but not limited to the mundane exposure to the noise and ever-increasing amount of older population. In the framework of a public health policymaking process, modeling of the hearing loss disease based on data is a key factor in alleviating the issues related to the disease issuing effective public health policies. First, the paper describes the steps of the data-driven policymaking process. Afterward, a scenario along with the part of the proposed platform, responsible for supporting policymaking are presented. With the aim of demonstrating the capabilities and usability of the platform for the policy-makers, some initial results of preliminary analytics are presented in a framework of a policy-making process. Ultimately, the utility of the approach is validated throughout the results of the survey which was presented to the health system policy-makers professionals involved in the policy development process in Croatia

Seamless Mobile Communications for mHealth

There is a growing trend in the health domain to incorporate Smartphones and other wireless technologies to provide more efficient, cost effective, and higher quality healthcare. With newer more sophisticated mobile devices for example, Smartphones this is an escalating practice. To date the use of mobile phone technology in the healthcare domain (mHealth) has been limited to uses such as disseminating information. However, mHealth is beginning to include software and data applications based on mobile devices and technologies. This movement is largely due to the advent of newer technologies associated with Smartphones. Some Smartphones can now be considered to be intelligent sensors with sensing capabilities such as GPS location, proximity and accelerometers. This paper examines the use of such technology in providing seamless mobile communications for mHealth

Easing the Creation Process of Mobile Applications for Non-Technical Users

In this day and age, the mobile phone is becoming one of the most indispensable personal computing device. People no longer use it just for communication (i.e. calling, sending messages) but also for other aspects of their lives as well. Because of this rise in demand for different and innovative applications, mobile companies (i.e. mobile handset manufacturers and mobile network providers) and organizations have realized the power of collaborative software development and have changed their business strategy. Instead of hiring specific organizations to do programming, they are now opening up their APIs and tools to allow ordinary people create their own mobile applications either for personal use or for profit. However, the problem with this approach is that there are people who might have nice ideas of their own but do not possess the technical expertise in order to create applications implementing these ideas. The goal of this research is to find ways to simplify the creation of mobile applications for non-technical people by applying model-driven software development particularly domain-specific modeling combined with techniques from the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) particularly iterative, user-centered system design. As proof of concept, we concentrate on the development of applications in the domain of mHealth and use the Android Framework as the target platform for code generation. The iterative user-centered design and development of the front-end tool which is called the Mobia Modeler, led us to eventually create a tool that features a configurable-component based design and integrated modeless environment to simplify the different development tasks of end-users. The Mobia models feature both constructs specialized for specific domains (e.g. sensor component, special component ), and also those that are applicable to any type of domain (e.g. structure component, basic component ). In order to accommodate different needs of end-users, a clear separation between the front-end tools (i.e. Mobia Modeler ) and the underlying code generator (i.e. Mobia Processor ) is recommended as long as there is a consistent model in between, that serves as a bridge between the different tools

End-user development in social psychology research:Factors for adoption

Psychology researchers employ the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to capture thoughts and behaviours of participants within their everyday lives. Smartphone-based ESM apps are increasingly used in such research. However, the diversity of researchers' app requirements, coupled with cost and complexity of their implementation, has prompted end-user development (EUD) approaches. In addition, limited evaluation of such environments beyond lab-based usability studies precludes discovery of factors pertaining to real-world EUD adoption.We first describe the extension of Jeeves, our visual programming environment for ESM app creation, in which we implemented additional functional requirements, derived from a survey and analysis of previous work. We further describe interviews with psychology researchers to understand their practical considerations for employing this extended environment in their work practices. Results of our analysis are presented as factors pertaining to the adoption of EUD activities within and between communities of practice.Postprin