Improving user engagement by aggregating and analysing health and fitness data on a mobile app

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. Nowadays, health, fitness and contextual data can be ubiquitously collected using wearable devices, sensors and smart phones and be stored in various servers and devices. However, to engage users in active monitoring of their health and fitness, it is essential to personalise the monitoring and have all the relevant data in one place. It is also important to give users control on how their data is collected, analysed, presented and stored. This paper presents how those important features are integrated in myFitnessCompanion®, an Android Health and fitness app developed by our team. The app is able to aggregate data from multiple sources, keep it on the phone or export it to servers or Electronic Health Records (EHR). It can also present the aggregated data in a personalised manner. A mobile app such as myFitnessCompanion® is a solution to the personalisation, interoperability and control issues that are key to user engagement

Bringing health and fitness data together for connected health care: Mobile apps as enablers of interoperability

Background: A transformation is underway regarding how we deal with our health. Mobile devices make it possible to have continuous access to personal health information. Wearable devices, such as Fitbit and Apple's smartwatch, can collect data continuously and provide insights into our health and fitness. However, lack of interoperability and the presence of data silos prevent users and health professionals from getting an integrated view of health and fitness data. To provide better health outcomes, a complete picture is needed which combines informal health and fitness data collected by the user together with official health records collected by health professionals. Mobile apps are well positioned to play an important role in the aggregation since they can tap into these official and informal health and data silos. Objective: The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that a mobile app can be used to aggregate health and fitness data and can enable interoperability. It discusses various technical interoperability challenges encountered while integrating data into one place. Methods: For 8 years, we have worked with third-party partners, including wearable device manufacturers, electronic health record providers, and app developers, to connect an Android app to their (wearable) devices, back-end servers, and systems. Results: The result of this research is a health and fitness app called myFitnessCompanion, which enables users to aggregate their data in one place. Over 6000 users use the app worldwide to aggregate their health and fitness data. It demonstrates that mobile apps can be used to enable interoperability. Challenges encountered in the research process included the different wireless protocols and standards used to communicate with wireless devices, the diversity of security and authorization protocols used to be able to exchange data with servers, and lack of standards usage, such as Health Level Seven, for medical information exchange. Conclusions: By limiting the negative effects of health data silos, mobile apps can offer a better holistic view of health and fitness data. Data can then be analyzed to offer better and more personalized advice and care

Personal heart monitoring and rehabilitation system using smart phones

This paper discusses a personalized heart monitoring system using smart phones and wireless (bio) sensors. Based on several scenarios we present the functionality of a prototype we have built. The application is capable of monitoring the health of high risk cardiac patients. The smart phone application analyses in real-time sensor and environmental data and can automatically alert the ambulance and pre assigned caregivers when a heart patient is in danger. It also transmits sensor data to a healthcare centre for remote monitoring by a nurse or cardiologist. The system can be personalized and rehabilitation programs can monitor the progress of a patient. Rehabilitation programs can be used to give advice (e.g. exercise more) or to reassure the patient. © 2006 IEEE

Personalized service and network adaptation for smart devices

The availability of smart devices with integrated GSM/GPRS/WiFi and the rollout of public hotspots allow users to be always online at reasonable costs. Personalised and context aware applications will become available in the forthcoming years due to the wide availability of smart devices and the interest of telecom operators and service providers to provide personalised services. For the user to access his preferred network and services in a particular context we need to have some mechanisms in place and an infrastructure that reacts autonomously on behalf of the user. This paper proposes a solution based on context-aware user profiles and their associated user preferences. It describes a smart device centered solution and a prototype has been built for Microsoft Windows Mobile™ Pocket PCs to validate the ideas. © 2005 IEEE

Design of emotion-aware mobile apps for autistic children

Sensor technologies and facial expression recognition are now widely used by mobile devices to sense our environment and our own physical and mental state. With these technologies today, we have the ability to sense emotions and create emotion-aware apps. One target group that would benefit from emotion-aware Apps are autistic children as they have difficulty understanding and expressing emotions and they are keen mobile device users. However, current mobile apps aimed at autistic children are not emotion-aware. This led our team to design a suite of Apps, called CaptureMyEmotion, that uses wireless sensors to capture physiological data together with facial expression recognition to provide a very personalised way to help autistic children and their carers understanding and managing their emotions. This paper describes how we designed CaptureMyEmotion and it discusses our experience while using sensors and facial expression recognition to detect emotion. It presents in more details the first App we developed for Android phone and tablets, called MyMedia. MyMedia enables children to take photos, videos or sounds, and simultaneously attach emotion data to them. The photos can then be reviewed together with a carer providing them a new way to understand emotions and discussing their daily activities. © 2013 IUPESM and Springer-Verlag

Helping Autistic Children Understand Their Emotions Using Facial Expression Recognition and Mobile Technologies

One of the main challenges for autistic children is to identify and express emotions. Many emotion-learning apps are available for smartphones and tablets to assist autistic children and their carers. However, they do not use the full potential offered by mobile technology, such as using facial expression recognition and wireless biosensors to recognise and sense emotions. To fill this gap we developed CaptureMyEmotion, an Android App that uses wireless sensors to capture physiological data together with facial expression recognition to provide a very personalised way to help autistic children learn about their emotions. The App enables children to capture photos, videos or sounds, and simultaneously attach emotion data and a self-portrait photo. The material can then be reviewed and discussed together with a carer at a later stage. CaptureMyEmotion has the potential to help autistic children integrate better in the society by providing a new way for them to understand their emotions

Feasibility trial of a novel mobile cardiac rehabilitation application

A trial with a cardiac rehabilitation centre is in progress where we test a novel cardiac rehab application using a standard mobile phone and wireless sensors. The goal is to obtain insight how remote monitoring compares to conventional rehabilitation methods in terms of adherence to cardiac rehabilitation programmes. In this trial we seek feedback from patients and health professionals regarding usability and practicability of the software and hardware used and we investigate whether the use of the novel mobile rehabilitation application provides clinically meaningful reassurance to patients during their cardiac rehabilitation. The trial also investigates whether physical and psychological measures improve using the system. This paper describes the mobile cardiac rehabilitation application as well as the setup of the trial. © 2010 IEEE

"From the hippocratic oath to electronic data storage": Ethical aspects for m-health projects in Australia

This paper discusses the issue of ethics when it comes to trialling m-health applications in a hospital environment in Australia. Our team has developed a personalised health monitoring application for smart phones using wireless biosensors to monitor and instruct patients. This paper discusses some of the Australian guidelines regarding ethical aspects of running technological trials of such mobile health projects on cardiac patients. Ethical issues regarding mobile health projects can be generally divided in two parts. The first one concerns any potential dangers to the patient's health. Although testing can also be done on healthy test subjects, the best way to acquire real-life test-data is to perform tests on actual cardiac patients. The second one is the privacy aspect in the doctor-patient relationship as some patients do not want to be identified as having a disease or do not want to have their records kept on file and used in scientific publications. Nevertheless, to show the benefits of this personalized m-health monitoring, a technical trial has to be conducted and research data needs to be published in a verifiable way. This paper gives an introduction into ethical regulations, organizations and issues in Australia. It describes, in detail, the issues involved in conducting technical trials in Australian hospitals. The paper gives several recommendations on how to deal with ethics in personalised m-health monitoring projects. © 2009 IADIS