Towards Continuous Professional Monitoring of Health Status Based on Energetic Balancing

Abstract

Health and performance monitoring technologies are commonly used by athletes. Obese people on the other hand benefit less from empowering technologies that address their specific needs. It would arguably have a substantial positive impact if such could promote a more active lifestyle. The consequential costs of obesity are a matter of great concern for health professionals and European policy makers alike. The EU-funded STop Obesity Project (STOP) addresses these shortcomings. Its main work results are a platform and a gamified app supporting people with obesity under professional supervision. STOP employs smart sensors and artificial intelligence in the form of a chatbot that teaches healthy nutrition and physical activity. Users interact with it through digital avatars on their smartphones while supervising health care professionals are presented with the results through an analytics pipeline. The platform is based on the Knowledge Management Ecosystem Portal (KM-EP) for data management, and visualisation. It fuses data from the app with streams from various vendors wearable health trackers. All the while ethical concerns feature prominently in the design of STOP. A feasibility study with obese volunteers showed that STOP in fact can be used as intended. Moreover, participants in a separate usability study gave generally positive ratings for its user experience.