Using quantified-self for future remote health monitoring

Remote monitoring is an essential part of future mHealth systems for the delivery of personal and pervasive healthcare, especially to allow the collection of personal bio-data outside clinical environments. mHealth involves the use of mobile technologies including sensors and smart phones with Internet connectivity to collect personal bio-data. Yet, by its very nature, it presents considerable challenges: (1) it will be a highly distributed task, (2) requiring collection of bio-data from a myriad of sources, (3) to be gathered at the clinical site, (4) and via secure communication channels. To address these challenges, we propose the use of an online social network (OSN) based on the quantified-self, i.e. the use of wearable sensors to monitor, collect and distribute personal bio-data, as a key component of a near-future remote health monitoring system. Additionally, the use of a social media context allows existing social interactions within the healthcare regime to be modeled within a carer network, working in harmony with, and providing support for, existing relationships and interactions between patients and healthcare professionals. We focus on the use of an online social media platform (OSMP) to enable two primitive functions of quantified-self which we consider essential for mHealth, and on which larger personal healthcare services could be built: remote health monitoring of personal bio-data, and an alert system for asynchronous notifications. We analyse the general requirements in a carer network for these two primitive functions, in terms of four different viewpoints within the carer network: the patient, the doctor in charge, a professional carer, and a family member (or friend) of the patient. We propose that a wellbeing remote monitoring scenario can act as a suitable proxy for mHealth monitoring by the use of an OSN. To allow rapid design, experimentation and evaluation of mHealth systems, we describe our experience of creating an mHealth system based on a wellbeing scenario, exploiting the quantified-self approach of measurement and monitoring. The use of wellbeing data in this manner is particularly valuable to researchers and systems developers, as key development work can be completed within a realistic scenario, but without risk to sensitive patient medical data. We discuss the suitability of using wellbeing monitoring as a proxy for mHealth monitoring with OSMPs in terms of functionality, performance and the key challenge in ensuring appropriate levels of security and privacy. We find that OSMPs based on quantified-self offer great potential for enabling personal and pervasive healthcare in an mHealth scenario

mHealth through quantified-self : a user study

This work was partly supported by the IU-ATC project, funded by grant EP/J016756/1 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Chonlatee Khorakhun is funded by the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA).We describe a user study of a mHealth prototype system based on a wellbeing scenario, exploiting the quantified-self approach to measurement and monitoring. We have used off-the-shelf equipment, with opensource, web-based, software, and exploiting the increasing popularity of smartphones and self-measurement devices in a user study. We emulate a mHealth scenario as a pre-clinical experiment, as a realistic alternative to a clinical scenario, with reduced risk to sensitive patient medical data. We discuss the efficacy of this approach for future mHealth systems for remote monitoring. Our system used the popular Fitbit device for monitoring personal wellbeing data, the Diaspora online social media platform (OSMP), and a simple Android/iOS remote notification application. We implemented remote monitoring, asynchronous user interaction, multiple actors, and user-controlled security and privacy mechanisms. We propose that the use of a quantified-self approach to mHealth is particularly valuable to undertake research and systems development.Postprin

Using Online Social Media Platforms for Ubiquitous, Personal Health Monitoring

Abstract-We propose the use of an open and publicly accessible online social media platform (OSMP) as a key component for ubiquitous and personal remote health monitoring. Remote monitoring is an essential part of future mHealth systems for the delivery of personal healthcare allowing the collection of personal bio-data outside clinical environments. Previous mHealth projects focused on building private and custom platforms using closed architectures, which have a high cost for implementation, take a long time to develop, and may provide limited access and usability. By exploiting existing and publicly accessible infrastructure using an OSMP, initial costs can be reduced, at the same time as allowing fast and flexible application development at scale, whilst presenting users with interfaces and interactions that they are familiar with. We survey and discuss suitability of OSMPs in terms of functionality, performance and the key challenge in ensuring appropriate levels of security and privacy