Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet

Mobile technology has been increasingly adopted in promotion of mental health among older people. This study assessed the feasibility of a mobile mental wellness training application for individual use and for group work from the perspectives of older adults and social care professionals. The older individuals recruited for the study were participants in a Circle of Friends group and family caregivers' peer support group offered by the communal senior services. The qualitative and quantitative results of interviews, questionnaires, observation, and application usage were reported. Seven older adults started using the application independently at home in parallel with the group activity. This study revealed new information regarding the barriers to the older adults' full adoption of such mobile technologies. The results indicated that there may be potential in the incorporation of mobile technologies in promotion of mental health of older people at group settings.

As a result of digitalization, data is available about almost every aspect of our lives. Personal data collected by individuals themselves or stored by organizations interacting with people is known as a digital footprint. The purpose of this study was to identify prerequisites for collecting and using digital data that could be valuable for health data analytics and new health services. Researchers and their contacts involved in a nationwide research project focusing on digital health in Finland were asked to participate in a pilot study on collecting their own personal data from various organizations of their own choice, such as retail chains, banks, insurance companies, and healthcare providers. After the pilot, a qualitative inquiry was adopted to collect semi-structured interview data from twelve active participants in the pilot. Interviews comprised themes such as the experiences of collecting personal data, as well as the usefulness of the data in general and for the participants themselves. Interview data was then analyzed thematically. Even if the participants had an academic background and were highly motivated to collect and use their data, they faced many challenges, such as quite long delays in the provision of the data, and the unresponsiveness of some organizations. Regarding the usefulness of the acquired personal data, our results show that participants had high expectations, but they were disappointed with the small amount of data and its irrelevant content. For the most part, the data was not in a format that would be useful for health data analytics and new health services. Participants also found that there were actual mistakes in their health data reports. The study revealed that collecting and using digital footprint data, even by knowledgeable individuals, is not an easy task. As the usefulness of the acquired personal health data mainly depended on its form and usability for services or solutions relevant to an individual, rather than on the data being valuable as such, more emphasis should be placed on providing the data in a reusable form.

Aims: To describe a study protocol for a randomized controlled trial which will evaluate the effectiveness of a gamified mobile health intervention for children in whole day surgery care.Design: A study protocol for a two‐arm randomized controlled trial.Methods: Participants will be randomly assigned to the intervention group (N = 62), in which patients receive routine care and play a mobile game designed for children or the control group (N = 62), in which patients receive routine care, including a mobile phone application that supports parents during the care path. The primary outcome is children's pre‐operative anxiety, while the secondary outcome measures included fear and postoperative pain, along with parental satisfaction and anxiety. Data collection started in August 2020.Results: The results of the ongoing randomized controlled trial will determine whether the developed gamified mobile health intervention can be recommended for hospital use, and whether it could be used to educate children about their surgical treatment to decrease anxiety.

Health recommender systems (HRSs) have the potential to effectively personalize well-being related behavior change interventions to the needs of individuals. However, personalization is often considered from a narrow perspective, and the underlying user features are inconsistent across HRSs. Particularly, theory-based determinants of behavior and the variety of lifestyle domains influencing well-being are poorly addressed. We propose a comprehensive, theory-based framework of user features, a virtual individual (VI) model, to support the extensive personalization of digital well-being interventions. We introduce a prototype HRS (With-Me HRS), which uses knowledge-based filtering and recommends behavior change objectives and activities from several lifestyle domains. With-Me HRS realizes a minimum set of important VI model features related to well-being, lifestyle, and behavioral intention. We report the preliminary validity and usefulness of the HRS, evaluated in a real-life health-coaching program with 50 participants. The recommendations were used in decision-making for half of the participants and hidden for others. For 73% of the participants (85% with visible vs. 62% with hidden recommendations), at least one of the recommended activities was included into their coaching plans. The HRS reduced coaches’ perceived effort in identifying appropriate coaching tasks for the participants (effect size: Vargha-Delaney Â=0.71, 95% CI 0.59-0.84) but not in identifying behavior change objectives. From the participants’ perspective, the quality of coaching improved (effect size for one of three quality metrics: Â=0.71, 95% CI 0.57-0.83). These results provide a baseline for testing the influence of additional user model features on the validity of recommendations generated by knowledge-based multi-domain HRSs.