Wearable Computing for Health and Fitness: Exploring the Relationship between Data and Human Behaviour

Health and fitness wearable technology has recently advanced, making it easier for an individual to monitor their behaviours. Previously self generated data interacts with the user to motivate positive behaviour change, but issues arise when relating this to long term mention of wearable devices. Previous studies within this area are discussed. We also consider a new approach where data is used to support instead of motivate, through monitoring and logging to encourage reflection. Based on issues highlighted, we then make recommendations on the direction in which future work could be most beneficial

Big Ideas paper: Policy-driven middleware for a legally-compliant Internet of Things.

Internet of Things (IoT) applications, systems and services are subject to law. We argue that for the IoT to develop lawfully, there must be technical mechanisms that allow the enforcement of speci ed policy, such that systems align with legal realities. The audit of policy enforcement must assist the apportionment of liability, demonstrate compliance with regulation, and indicate whether policy correctly captures le- gal responsibilities. As both systems and obligations evolve dynamically, this cycle must be continuously maintained. This poses a huge challenge given the global scale of the IoT vision. The IoT entails dynamically creating new ser- vices through managed and exible data exchange . Data management is complex in this dynamic environment, given the need to both control and share information, often across federated domains of administration. We see middleware playing a key role in managing the IoT. Our vision is for a middleware-enforced, uni ed policy model that applies end-to-end, throughout the IoT. This is because policy cannot be bound to things, applications, or administrative domains, since functionality is the result of composition, with dynamically formed chains of data ows. We have investigated the use of Information Flow Control (IFC) to manage and audit data ows in cloud computing; a domain where trust can be well-founded, regulations are more mature and associated responsibilities clearer. We feel that IFC has great potential in the broader IoT context. However, the sheer scale and the dynamic, federated nature of the IoT pose a number of signi cant research challenges.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant ID: EP/K011510 CloudSafetyNet: End-to-End Application Security in the Cloud), Microsoft (through the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre

Wearables and Wearable Data in Tele-Health Applications

With the sudden emergence of Covid-19, Tele-Health has been forced into the forefront of healthcare. With no human contact, regular in-person doctor or clinic visits could not be made. Unfortunately, there is a gap in patient data for healthcare professionals when making diagnoses remotely. Fortunately, many users are constantly collecting some primary health data through wearables that have become commonplace in users\u27 homes. Tapping into this unused data could provide healthcare professionals with a better picture of patients\u27 health remotely. In this thesis, I will determine whether this wearable data can be a viable addition to Tele-Health applications, providing additional information to healthcare professionals when making a diagnosis remotely. I hypothesize that wearable data would help patients and healthcare professionals in Tele-Health applications. To that end, I distributed an online survey to medical professionals at the University of Mississippi and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Respondents were asked a series of questions about Tele-Health, if they wore wearable devices, trusted the data gathered from said devices, if they would recommend wearables to patients, and use the data to make diagnosis decisions. The results showed overwhelmingly that healthcare professionals believe wearable technology could greatly aid the Tele-Health communications process for both patients and healthcare workers alike. The addition of the data could help many diagnoses be more accurate and give patients better care. Overall, wearable data has a promising future in aiding Tele-Health for many years to come

Big Ideas paper: Policy-driven middleware for a legally-compliant Internet of Things.

Internet of Things (IoT) applications, systems and services are subject to law. We argue that for the IoT to develop lawfully, there must be technical mechanisms that allow the enforcement of speci ed policy, such that systems align with legal realities. The audit of policy enforcement must assist the apportionment of liability, demonstrate compliance with regulation, and indicate whether policy correctly captures le- gal responsibilities. As both systems and obligations evolve dynamically, this cycle must be continuously maintained. This poses a huge challenge given the global scale of the IoT vision. The IoT entails dynamically creating new ser- vices through managed and exible data exchange . Data management is complex in this dynamic environment, given the need to both control and share information, often across federated domains of administration. We see middleware playing a key role in managing the IoT. Our vision is for a middleware-enforced, uni ed policy model that applies end-to-end, throughout the IoT. This is because policy cannot be bound to things, applications, or administrative domains, since functionality is the result of composition, with dynamically formed chains of data ows. We have investigated the use of Information Flow Control (IFC) to manage and audit data ows in cloud computing; a domain where trust can be well-founded, regulations are more mature and associated responsibilities clearer. We feel that IFC has great potential in the broader IoT context. However, the sheer scale and the dynamic, federated nature of the IoT pose a number of signi cant research challenges

Exposing Privacy Concerns in mHealth Data Sharing

Mobile health (mHealth) has become important in the field of healthcare information technology, as patients begin to use mobile devices to record their daily activities and vital signs. These devices can record personal health information even outside the hospital setting, while the patients are at home or at their workplace. However, the devices might record sensitive information that might not be relevant for medical purposes and in some cases may be misused. Patients need expressive privacy controls so that they can trade potential health benefits of the technology with the privacy risks. To provide such privacy controls, it is important to understand what patients feel are the benefits and risks associated with the technology and what controls they want over the information. We conducted focus groups to understand the privacy concerns that patients have when they use mHealth devices. We conducted a user study to understand how willing patients are to share their personal health information that was collected using an mHealth device. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study that explores users\u27 privacy concerns by giving them the opportunity to actually share the information collected about them using mHealth devices. We found that patients tend to share more information with third parties than the public and prefer to keep certain information from their family and friends. Finally, based on these discoveries, we propose some guidelines to developing defaults for sharing settings in mHealth systems