Personal health promotion through personalized health technologies — Nuadu experience

Abstract

Poor lifestyles - overweight, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, sleep deprivation, and stress - are significant risk factors to chronic illnesses, which cause majority of the health care costs. Hence, behavioral change towards healthy lifestyles is one of the keys to health care cost containment. Personal health systems (PHS) offer tools to support behavioral change. As health risks, personal needs and preferences vary from an individual to another, personalization of the PHS is needed. In Nuadu project we have developed a PHS integrating several different personal health technologies. This system was studied in a large (N=354) randomized controlled trial where employees with several health risks participated in a health promotion program. The study will finish in June 2009. User feedback and technology usage logs reveal that especially simple mobile technologies were actively used during the program. However, usage models varied between individuals and time, and there was a significant number of both active users and non-users. The results emphasize that "one size" does not fit all, and instead of individual "killer applications", PHS with different personalizable and interoperable options should be developed. In addition, screening and profiling methods should be developed to identify those users who would best accept and benefit from technology-supported health promotion. Successful technologies combine high usability and conceptual simplicity to clear and perceivable added value for the end users.