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Designing Mobile Health Technologies for Self-Monitoring: The Bite Counter as a Case Study

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Mobile Health

Abstract

Mobile health (mHealth) technologies are envisioned as self-monitoring tools of health behaviors (Kumar et al., Computer 46:28–35, 2013). They are meant to empower the individual to make sustainable behavior change that leads to better health. They are intended to be used long-term, with minimal to no supervision. This is in contrast to laboratory and clinical testing tools which are typically used short-term by physicians and researchers under strict patient constraints to resolve urgent conditions. Because of the individual-empowered focus, mHealth technologies need to meet the following design criteria: low user burden; low-cost; and long-term usability under free-living conditions. mHealth technologies present an interesting opportunity because of the high quantity of inexpensive data generated, which is far, far greater than what is typically provided by sporadic and expensive laboratory tests. In this chapter, we discuss this opportunity in the context of the development of the Bite Counter. The Bite Counter uses sensors embedded into a watch-like device to automatically track wrist motion to count bites. The device provides the user intake feedback during a meal, allowing them to self-monitor intake anywhere and anytime. The behavior change goal is to reduce intake in a way that results in healthy weight loss.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA

    Eric R. Muth

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA

    Adam Hoover

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  1. Eric R. Muth
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  2. Adam Hoover
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Correspondence to Eric R. Muth .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    James M. Rehg

  2. Department of Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Susan A. Murphy

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

    Santosh Kumar

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Muth, E.R., Hoover, A. (2017). Designing Mobile Health Technologies for Self-Monitoring: The Bite Counter as a Case Study. In: Rehg, J., Murphy, S., Kumar, S. (eds) Mobile Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51394-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51394-2_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51393-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51394-2

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