Abstract
The use of participatory sensing in relation to the capture of health-related data is rapidly becoming a possibility due to the widespread consumer adoption of emerging mobile computing technologies and sensing platforms. This has the potential to revolutionize data collection for population health, aspects of epidemiology, and health-related e-Science applications and as we will describe, provide new public health intervention capabilities, with the classifications and capabilities of such participatory sensing platforms only just beginning to be explored. Such a development will have important benefits for access to near real-time, large-scale, up to population-scale data collection. However, there are also numerous issues to be addressed first: provision of stringent anonymity and privacy within these methodologies, user interface issues, and the related issue of how to incentivize participants and address barriers/concerns over participation. To provide a step towards describing these aspects, in this paper we present a first classification of health participatory sensing models, a novel contribution to the literature, and provide a conceptual reference architecture for health participatory sensing networks (HPSNs) and user interaction example case study.
Highlights
The use of health participatory sensing as a data collection methodology is rapidly becoming a reality that will revolutionize the scale and types of data that can be aggregated for a number of population health, epidemiological, statistical and data analysis purposes
In Section Two we provide a classification of health participatory sensing models, in Section Three we describe a conceptual reference architecture for health participatory sensing networks (HPSNs), in Section Four we address user interaction and Section Five is the Conclusion
While an active participatory model for typical sensing might focus on affecting individuals to collect a more complete data set in terms of spatial/temporal range, health and epidemiological-related active participatory sensing would be more concerned with affecting a health-related action and have a component equating to a public health intervention
Summary
The use of health participatory sensing as a data collection methodology is rapidly becoming a reality that will revolutionize the scale and types of data that can be aggregated for a number of population health, epidemiological, statistical and data analysis purposes. The range of possibilities for participatory sensing is large [2], previous work in participatory sensing has not considered in detail the different participatory models that are likely to occur in the health context As these models have the potential to scale to millions or nation-wide levels, both the potential and complexities of these data systems are substantial. There are attempts to make sensors more unobtrusively wearable, such as with projects like Heartphones [14] – a coupling of a heart rate monitor with headphones and a mobile device Overall this has led to a great improvement in potential capability, but with most research focused on the use of such data collection by the individual, there has been less attention given to the potential for and challenges to usage to provide population wellness measures or for wider population health or population epidemiological usage.
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