mHealth through quantified-self : a user study

Abstract

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.