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Monitoring Chronic Pain: Comparing Wearable and Mobile Interfaces

  • Conference paper
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Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10069))

Abstract

Technologies to monitor patients are convenient for patients and can reduce health costs. Chronic pain is a pain that lasts more than 3 months and affects the welfare of patients. Pain is subjective and there are applications to self-report pain, but their adherence rates are low. The purpose of this article is the understanding of the characteristics of technology that helps the adoption of these systems. We have implemented two solutions (mobile application and wearable device), in order to compare them to measure the rate of user acceptance, and also to get feedback about fundamental features of interfaces to report pain levels. To evaluate the two solutions we conducted interviews with 12 people. The results showed that when given the choice between both devices, 67 % of the users preferred the wearable device over the mobile application, and 16.5 % preferred the mobile application over the wearable device. We also found that a device for reporting pain must be specific to this purpose, aesthetically pleasing and allow users to report easily and at the right time.

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Acknowledgments

This proyect was supported partially by CONICYT-PCHA/ Doctorado Nacional/13-21130661, 2014-63140077, CONICIT and MICIT Costa Rica PhD scholarship grant, Universidad de Costa Rica and Fondecyt Proyect (Chile), grant: 1150365.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Iyubanit Rodríguez, Carolina Fuentes, Valeria Herskovic & Mauricio Campos

Authors
  1. Iyubanit Rodríguez
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  2. Carolina Fuentes
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  3. Valeria Herskovic
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  4. Mauricio Campos
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Iyubanit Rodríguez , Carolina Fuentes , Valeria Herskovic or Mauricio Campos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain

    Carmelo R. García

  2. Departamento de Estadistica, Universidad La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain

    Pino Caballero-Gil

  3. Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA

    Mike Burmester

  4. University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain

    Alexis Quesada-Arencibia

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Rodríguez, I., Fuentes, C., Herskovic, V., Campos, M. (2016). Monitoring Chronic Pain: Comparing Wearable and Mobile Interfaces. In: García, C., Caballero-Gil, P., Burmester, M., Quesada-Arencibia, A. (eds) Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence. UCAmI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10069. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48746-5_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48746-5_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48745-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48746-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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