Obesity, frequently nicknamed as one of the pandemics of the century, is
a disease that is currently over an alarming upward curve of his incidence.
Even though obesity is usually associated with nutritional and physical problems,
the psychological component has a very signi cant weight, either as
a motivation factor, with psychological problems that result in eating disorders,
or as a consequence, by self-esteem reduction and social integration
problems. These multiple conditions directly related to obesity, are from
the doctor point of view, accompanied by di erent medical specialties that
aim to improve the patient condition at each of them.
Given the rising impact of mobile technologies as support tools in di erent
health situations, Mobile Health (mHealth) systems have been proposed to
the obesity context. However, there are still diverse problems with most
of the approaches that result in rapid user demotivation and, consequently,
treatment failure. A big part of these problems is exacerbated by a strong
performance quanti cation (e.g., gained 1 Kg) and inexistent or very poor
medical-patient support.
With these aspects in mind, this work is based on a user-centered iterative
approach, so that, from previous work in a mHealth tool to obese patients,
new strategies and functionalities are suggested that allow higher support
to obese regarding the psychological component.
In these terms, positive psychology and qualitative approaches are proposed
every time there is a type of evaluation that has to be done. From this
guiding principle, there was considered the integration from a device that
allows patients to, e ortless, from the possible ailments, have a suggestion
from the quantity that he shall ingest upon his meal.
Regarding the medical-patient support, it was given to both parts the possibility
of an association between, so that doctors can have more impact on
the information that patients can see. In the opposite direction, with the
goal of providing doctors the highest quantity of information possible about
their patients, it is given to patients the possibility of automatically sharing
information about their routine.
The developed work allows now to support a more in-depth discussion about
the impact and receptivity from the proposed approaches, either int the success
of mHealth applications regarding obesity treatment, as the relevance
and value that the medical-patient relationship can add to treatments by
this via.Sistema eletrónico para pesquisa de marcadores fisiológicos da dor
Obesity, frequently nicknamed as one of the pandemics of the century, is
a disease that is currently over an alarming upward curve of his incidence.
Even though obesity is usually associated with nutritional and physical problems,
the psychological component has a very significant weight, either as
a motivation factor, with psychological problems that result in eating disorders,
or as a consequence, by self-esteem reduction and social integration
problems. These multiple conditions directly related to obesity, are from
the doctor point of view, accompanied by different medical specialties that
aim to improve the patient condition at each of them.
Given the rising impact of mobile technologies as support tools in different
health situations, Mobile Health (mHealth) systems have been proposed to
the obesity context. However, there are still diverse problems with most
of the approaches that result in rapid user demotivation and, consequently,
treatment failure. A big part of these problems is exacerbated by a strong
performance quantification (e.g., gained 1 Kg) and inexistent or very poor
medical-patient support.
With these aspects in mind, this work is based on a user-centered iterative
approach, so that, from previous work in a mHealth tool to obese patients,
new strategies and functionalities are suggested that allow higher support
to obese regarding the psychological component.
In these terms, positive psychology and qualitative approaches are proposed
every time there is a type of evaluation that has to be done. From this
guiding principle, there was considered the integration from a device that
allows patients to, effortless, from the possible ailments, have a suggestion
from the quantity that he shall ingest upon his meal.
Regarding the medical-patient support, it was given to both parts the possibility
of an association between, so that doctors can have more impact on
the information that patients can see. In the opposite direction, with the
goal of providing doctors the highest quantity of information possible about
their patients, it is given to patients the possibility of automatically sharing
information about their routine.
The developed work allows now to support a more in-depth discussion about
the impact and receptivity from the proposed approaches, either int the success
of mHealth applications regarding obesity treatment, as the relevance
and value that the medical-patient relationship can add to treatments by
this via.Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e Telemátic