Design for personalized mobile health applications for enhanced older people participation - 05/12/15

Doi : 10.1016/j.eurger.2015.10.004

P. Devos ^a,^⁎ , A. Min Jou ^a, G. De Waele ^a, M. Petrovic ^b
^a Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University, Campus Schoonmeersen, Valentin Vaerwyckweg, 1, 9000 Gent, Belgium
^b Department of Internal Medicine, section of Geriatrics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ghent University, De Pintelaan, 185, 9000 Gent, Belgium

^⁎Corresponding author. Tel.: +32 9 2432535.

Abstract

Background

Today's digital society opens opportunities for the development of mobile health applications to support the medical care.

Methods and results

As a design example, an Android app is written for the Android ecosystem (Google, Mountain View, CA) using Android Studio as the integrated development environment and allows in this way for widespread implementation on personal devices of different sizes (smartphone, tablet). The resulting app is able to record the medication intake, log physiological parameters and perform cognitive assessment. In an additional step, the app is personalized by incorporating personal data (pictures of friends, family, hobbies…) in the assessment tests for cognitive functions. As this data becomes more and more available from social media, it can be easily integrated in these types of apps.

Conclusion

Due to this personalization, the older people participation is expected to enhance, a crucial aspect needed for the future widespread deployment of these systems.

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Keywords : Android, M-health, Older people, Smartphone, Personalization