Lecturer/researcher
BackgroundEncouraging healthy eating behavior and increasing physical activity can improve health, vitality, and quality of life. Individuals and health professionals have specific needs and wishes. Creative technology allows personalization of blended lifestyle programs that support behavior change by presenting persuasive elements and self-regulation. However, the development of such personalized digital tools are time consuming and expensive. New research projects with regard to physical activity and/or nutrition that apply creative technology often start from scratch, while many of the core components are generic. Therefore, we aim to develop a modular platform that serves as a foundation to build several lifestyle applications for various populations, while taking into account the specific needs of the end users. To demonstrate how we can use the platform for a blended lifestyle program regarding physical activity and nutrition, the SONUTS application was developed. SONUTS helps older adults to maintain or lose weight while preserving muscle mass and function.Description of the applicationOur Modular E-health platform supports three end users: clients, health professionals, and researchers. It enables the use of various behavior change techniques such as goalsetting and action planning. The SO-NUTS application, that has been built on the platform, offers clients to track their dietary intake and physical activity, goal setting, evaluation, communication with health professional and in the future with members of the community. The health professional can track progress and can adjust goals when necessary. Data from both clients and health professionals can be retrieved by researchers, clients and professionals to determine effectiveness of the intervention.Practical description of demoWe will present a clickable demo version of the SO-NUTS application that was built on the modular platform. Moreover, we will show various options of the modular platform to demonstrate its use in the development of new applications for future research projects.
The aging population faces two conditions that threaten healthy aging: high fat mass (obesity) and low muscle mass and function (sarcopenia). The combination of both—referred to as sarcopenic obesity—synergistically increases the risk of adverse health outcomes. The two conditions often co-occur because they reinforce each other and share common etiologies, including poor nutrition and inactivity. All aging people are at risk of gaining weight and losing muscle mass and could benefit from improvements in physical activity, exercise and dietary intake. one specific window of opportunity is during the transient time of retirement, as older adults already need to restructure their daily activities. It is key to change lifestyle behavior in a sustainable manner, providing scientifically proven, personalized, and acceptable principles that can be integrated in daily life. Health technologies (e.g., applications) can provide promising tools to deliver personalized and appealing lifestyle interventions to a large group of people while keeping health care costs low. Several studies show that health technologies have a strong positive effect on physical activity, exercise and dietary intake. Specifically, health technology is increasingly applied to older people, although strong evidence for long term effects in changing lifestyle behavior is generally lacking. Concluding, technology could play an important role in the highly warranted prevention of sarcopenic obesity in older adults. Although health technology seems to be a promising tool to stimulate changes in physical activity, exercise and dietary intake, studies on long lasting effects and specifically targeted on older people around the time of retirement are warranted.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of people’s lives, and seems to have affected people’s wellbeing and relation to technology now, and in the future. Not only has it changed people’s lives and the way citizens live, work, exercise, craft and stay connected, the pandemic has also altered the way Human Computer Interaction (HCI) professionals can engage in face-to-face interactions and consequently participatory, human-centered design and research. Limitations in being close to others and having physical, visible and shared interactions pose a challenge as these aspects are typically considered critical for the accomplishment of a transparent, attractive and critical understanding of technology and respective civic and digital engagement for wellbeing. Consequently, the risk now observed is that citizens in the new ‘normal’ digital society, particularly vulnerable groups, are beingeven less connected, supported or heard. Drawing from a study with an expert panel of 20 selected HCI related professionals in The Netherlands that participated on-line (through focus groups, questionnaires and/or interviews) discussing co-creation for wellbeing in times of COVID-19 (N=20), and civic values for conditional data sharing (N=11), this paper presents issues encountered and potential new approaches to overcome participatory challenges in the ‘new’ digital society. This study further draws on project reporting and a ‘one week in the life of’ study in times of COVID-19 with a physical toolkit for remote data collection that was used with older adults (65+, N=13) and evaluated with professionals (N=6). Drawing on such projects and professional experiences, the paper discusses some opportunities of participatory approaches for the new ‘distant’ normal.
