Relating physical activity, pleasure, and daily satisfaction of older adults: a pilot study

Backround:\ud Literature has shown the potential of physical exercise in promoting well-being in the older population. However, the relation between everyday physical activity (PA) and positive emotions is still unknown.\ud \ud Objective:\ud Analyze the relation between physical activity and positive emotions in the daily living of the 65+ population.\ud \ud Methods:\ud • 5 participants (67.4±2.19 yrs) monitored during 29±3 days\ud • Objective measurements: PA assessed with 3D accelerometer counting average IMA/min\ud • Subjective measurements: Positive emotional factors (pleasure and daily satisfaction) assessed on smartphone (Figure 1). Pleasure assessed by experience sampling (ES).\ud \ud Results:\ud • ES-level analysis: negative correlation between pleasure and PA (rsall_sub=-.102*). Correlation within subject ranges from rsmax=.038 to rsmin-0.235*. (Fig. 2). Significant negative correlation between PA and hour of day (rsall_sub=-.215*; rsmax=-0.135; -0.345*) (Fig. 3);\ud • Day-level analysis: average PA is not significantly related to pleasure or daily satisfaction.\ud \ud Conclusion:\ud Daily level of PA is not correlated with the two positive emotional factors chosen in our sample. We suggest analyze of other elements of daily living (e.g. location) as mediators when analyzing relation between PA and positive emotions within individuals. Interventions for promotion of physical activity based on positive emotions must be personalized

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

COVID-BEHAVE dataset:measuring human behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aiming to illuminate the effects of enforced confinements on people’s lives, this paper presents a novel dataset that measures human behaviour holistically and longitudinally during the COVID-19 outbreak. In particular, we conducted a study during the first wave of the lockdown, where 21 healthy subjects from the Netherlands and Greece participated, collecting multimodal raw and processed data from smartphone sensors, activity trackers, and users’ responses to digital questionnaires. The study lasted more than two months, although the duration of the data collection varies per participant. The data are publicly available and can be used to model human behaviour in a broad sense as the dataset explores physical, social, emotional, and cognitive domains. The dataset offers an exemplary perspective on a given group of people that could be considered to build new models for investigating behaviour changes as a consequence of the lockdown. Importantly, to our knowledge, this is the first dataset combining passive sensing, experience sampling, and virtual assistants to study human behaviour dynamics in a prolonged lockdown situation

Proposal for an Online Service Development and Evaluation

The research leading to these results was carried out under the AAL Programme under project number AAL-2019-6-168-CP with funding by the European Union and the national funding agencies from the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland: The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMW), Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), and Innosuisse – Swiss Innovation Agency. DELA Nature- En Levensverzekerigen NV is represented in the project by Caroline Smeets and Ilse Pullens.Background: Loss of a spouse is a frequent occurrence in later life. While most older adults successfully process this loss and will return to a normal life, about 10% of the individuals are unable to cope, and progress to prolonged grief (PG). PG, in turn, can result in mental and physical problems including poor sleep, cardiovascular problems, depression, and suicidal tendencies. Objective: LEAVES (optimizing the mentaL health and resiliencE of older Adults that haVe lost thEir spouSe via blended, online therapy) is an online bereavement program that will support the prevention and treatment of PG, so that elderly mourners can continue to lead an active, meaningful, and dignified life. LEAVES will cater to secondary end users (eg, family, informal caregivers) by reducing stress. Methods: LEAVES will help older adults to process the loss of a spouse in an online environment, which consists of (1) an existing online grief self-help program LIVIA, (2) the Before You Leave program that allows for storing personal memories, (3) a virtual agent platform, and (4) an accessible front-end design. LEAVES can detect persons at risk for complications, reveal negative trends in their emotional life, and act to counter such trends. The service relies on online support whenever possible but is blended with telephone or face-to-face counseling when necessary. Results: The project will take place between February 2020 and January 2023 and includes a real-life evaluation in which 315 end users will use the service across 3 countries (the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland). The evaluation of LEAVES will focus on clinical effect, its business case, and technology acceptance. The results will pave the way for smooth integration into existing care paths and reimbursement schemes. Conclusions: The LEAVES service aims to soften the mourning process, prevents depression or social isolation, strengthens widow(er)s resilience and well-being, and quickens one's return to societal participation.otherpublishe

Promotion of Active Aging using a tailored recommendation system

Active Aging deals with the support and integration of the elderly population in a society focusing on improving physical and mental well-being. Persuasive technology provides solutions for tailored interventions aiming at maintaining an active lifestyle. The present paper introduces the initial ideas of a PhD trajectory that proposes to design and develop a tailored monitoring and coaching system for the promotion of Active Aging based on principles of physical and mental well-being. This is a multidisciplinary research that uses theories from Positive Psychology to determine input / output and informatics for the data processing and decision making system

Active and pleasant ageing: supported by technology

The proportion of the global population aged above 60 years old is growing more rapidly than any other age group creating several socio-economic challenges. Finding strategies to preserve functional independence for as long as possible is a priority to reduce the burden on the healthcare sector and enhance quality-of-life for the older population. In 2015, the World Health Organization defined Healthy Ageing as "the process of developing and maintaining thefunctional ability that enables wellbeing in older age". As such, Healthy Ageing places the individuals as active participants in managing their own health, focusing on the importance of healthy behaviors as strategies to preserve functional ability in older age. Telemedicine systems and services - often interchangeably referred to as telehealth or eHealth systems - concern the use of ICT in the prevention, diagnosis and/or treatment of diseases from a distance . For Active and Healthy Ageing, telemedicine services can provide support in monitoring, diagnosis and treatment in several life domains, such as physical and mental health, mobility, social connectedness, everyday activities and leisure. The main aim of this Thesis is to explore how technology can be utilized in the support of Active and Healthy Ageing in daily life, by promoting physical activity and emotional wellbeing in everyday life