ObeOne 2.0: going beyond the numbers in an mHealth approach for obesity

Abstract

Obesity, frequently nicknamed as one of the pandemics of the century, is a disease that is currently over an alarming upward curve of his incidence. Even though obesity is usually associated with nutritional and physical problems, the psychological component has a very signi cant weight, either as a motivation factor, with psychological problems that result in eating disorders, or as a consequence, by self-esteem reduction and social integration problems. These multiple conditions directly related to obesity, are from the doctor point of view, accompanied by di erent medical specialties that aim to improve the patient condition at each of them. Given the rising impact of mobile technologies as support tools in di erent health situations, Mobile Health (mHealth) systems have been proposed to the obesity context. However, there are still diverse problems with most of the approaches that result in rapid user demotivation and, consequently, treatment failure. A big part of these problems is exacerbated by a strong performance quanti cation (e.g., gained 1 Kg) and inexistent or very poor medical-patient support. With these aspects in mind, this work is based on a user-centered iterative approach, so that, from previous work in a mHealth tool to obese patients, new strategies and functionalities are suggested that allow higher support to obese regarding the psychological component. In these terms, positive psychology and qualitative approaches are proposed every time there is a type of evaluation that has to be done. From this guiding principle, there was considered the integration from a device that allows patients to, e ortless, from the possible ailments, have a suggestion from the quantity that he shall ingest upon his meal. Regarding the medical-patient support, it was given to both parts the possibility of an association between, so that doctors can have more impact on the information that patients can see. In the opposite direction, with the goal of providing doctors the highest quantity of information possible about their patients, it is given to patients the possibility of automatically sharing information about their routine. The developed work allows now to support a more in-depth discussion about the impact and receptivity from the proposed approaches, either int the success of mHealth applications regarding obesity treatment, as the relevance and value that the medical-patient relationship can add to treatments by this via.

Sistema eletrónico para pesquisa de marcadores fisiológicos da dor Obesity, frequently nicknamed as one of the pandemics of the century, is a disease that is currently over an alarming upward curve of his incidence. Even though obesity is usually associated with nutritional and physical problems, the psychological component has a very significant weight, either as a motivation factor, with psychological problems that result in eating disorders, or as a consequence, by self-esteem reduction and social integration problems. These multiple conditions directly related to obesity, are from the doctor point of view, accompanied by different medical specialties that aim to improve the patient condition at each of them. Given the rising impact of mobile technologies as support tools in different health situations, Mobile Health (mHealth) systems have been proposed to the obesity context. However, there are still diverse problems with most of the approaches that result in rapid user demotivation and, consequently, treatment failure. A big part of these problems is exacerbated by a strong performance quantification (e.g., gained 1 Kg) and inexistent or very poor medical-patient support. With these aspects in mind, this work is based on a user-centered iterative approach, so that, from previous work in a mHealth tool to obese patients, new strategies and functionalities are suggested that allow higher support to obese regarding the psychological component. In these terms, positive psychology and qualitative approaches are proposed every time there is a type of evaluation that has to be done. From this guiding principle, there was considered the integration from a device that allows patients to, effortless, from the possible ailments, have a suggestion from the quantity that he shall ingest upon his meal. Regarding the medical-patient support, it was given to both parts the possibility of an association between, so that doctors can have more impact on the information that patients can see. In the opposite direction, with the goal of providing doctors the highest quantity of information possible about their patients, it is given to patients the possibility of automatically sharing information about their routine. The developed work allows now to support a more in-depth discussion about the impact and receptivity from the proposed approaches, either int the success of mHealth applications regarding obesity treatment, as the relevance and value that the medical-patient relationship can add to treatments by this via.