Mobile and tablet apps, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, wearable computing and domotics for health.

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet #Preprint #PeerReviewMe: Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint. Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn. Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period. Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author). Background: Nutrition-related apps are commonly used to provide information about the users’ dietary intake, but limited research has been performed on the evaluation of their reliability. Objective: To evaluate the relative reliability of popular nutrition-related apps for the assessment of energy and available macro- and micronutrients against a standard method. Methods: Dietary analysis of 24-hour weighed food records (n = 20) were compared between five nutrition-related apps: S Health, MyFitnessPal, FatSecret, Noom Coach and Lose It!, and DietPlan6 (reference method). Estimates of energy, macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein, fat, saturated fat and fibre) and micronutrients (sodium, calcium, iron, vitamin A and vitamin C) were compared using t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, correlation coefficients and Bland-Altman plots. 24-hour weighed food records from 20 participants (female/male, 15/5; mean age, 36.3 years; mean body mass index, 22.9 kg/m2) recruited from previous controlled studies conducted at the Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition, University of Reading, UK. Results: No significant difference in estimation of energy and saturated fat intake between DietPlan6 and the diet apps was observed. Estimates of protein and sodium intake were significantly lower using Lose It! and FatSecret than DietPlan6. Lose It! also gave significantly lower estimates for other reported outputs: carbohydrate, fat, fibre and sodium, compared with DietPlan6. For S Health and MyFitnessPal, calcium, iron and vitamin C were all significantly under-estimated compared with DietPlan6, although there was no significant difference for vitamin A. No other significant differences were observed between DietPlan6 and the apps. Correlation coefficients ranged from -0.12 for iron (S Health vs. DietPlan6) to 0.91 for protein (FatSecret vs DietPlan6). Noom Coach was limited to energy output but it had a high correlation with DietPlan6 (r=0.91) and S Health had the greatest variation of correlation, with energy at 0.79. Bland-Altman analysis revealed potential proportional bias for vitamin A. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the apps provide comparable estimates of energy and saturated fat intake compared with DietPlan6. With the exception of Lose It!, the apps also provided comparable estimates of carbohydrate, total fat and fibre. Two apps displayed a tendency to underestimate protein and sodium (FatSecret and Lose It!). Apart from vitamin A, the estimates of micronutrient intake (calcium, iron and vitamin C) by the two apps (S Health and MyFitnessPal) were inconsistent and less reliable. Lose It! was the less comparable app in relation to DietPlan6. As the use and availability of apps grows, this study helps clinicians and researchers to make better-informed decisions about using these apps in research and practice.

Objective . We aim to develop and evaluate an affective brain–computer music interface (aBCMI) for modulating the affective states of its users. Approach . An aBCMI is constructed to detect a user's current affective state and attempt to modulate it in order to achieve specific objectives (for example, making the user calmer or happier) by playing music which is generated according to a specific affective target by an algorithmic music composition system and a case-based reasoning system. The system is trained and tested in a longitudinal study on a population of eight healthy participants, with each participant returning for multiple sessions. Main results . The final online aBCMI is able to detect its users current affective states with classification accuracies of up to 65% (3 class, p < 0.01 ) and modulate its user's affective states significantly above chance level ( p < 0.05 ) . Significance . Our system represents one of the first demonstrations of an online aBCMI that is able to accurately detect and respond to user's affective states. Possible applications include use in music therapy and entertainment.

Background: Evidence suggests that eating behaviors and adherence to dietary guidelines can be improved using nutrition-related apps. Apps delivering personalized nutrition (PN) advice to users can provide individual support at scale with relatively low cost. Objective: This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a mobile web app (eNutri) that delivers automated PN advice for improving diet quality, relative to general population food-based dietary guidelines. Methods: Nondiseased UK adults (aged >18 years) were randomized to PN advice or control advice (population-based healthy eating guidelines) in a 12-week controlled, parallel, single-blinded dietary intervention, which was delivered on the web. Dietary intake was assessed using the eNutri Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ). An 11-item US modified Alternative Healthy Eating Index (m-AHEI), which aligned with UK dietary and nutritional recommendations, was used to derive the automated PN advice. The primary outcome was a change in diet quality (m-AHEI) at 12 weeks. Participant surveys evaluated the PN report (week 12) and longer-term impact of the PN advice (mean 5.9, SD 0.65 months, after completion of the study). Results: Following the baseline FFQ, 210 participants completed at least 1 additional FFQ, and 23 outliers were excluded for unfeasible dietary intakes. The mean interval between FFQs was 10.8 weeks. A total of 96 participants were included in the PN group (mean age 43.5, SD 15.9 years; mean BMI 24.8, SD 4.4 kg/m2) and 91 in the control group (mean age 42.8, SD 14.0 years; mean BMI 24.2, SD 4.4 kg/m2). Compared with that in the control group, the overall m-AHEI score increased by 3.5 out of 100 (95% CI 1.19-5.78) in the PN group, which was equivalent to an increase of 6.1% (P=.003). Specifically, the m-AHEI components nuts and legumes and red and processed meat showed significant improvements in the PN group (P=.04). At follow-up, 64% (27/42) of PN participants agreed that, compared with baseline, they were still following some (any) of the advice received and 31% (13/42) were still motivated to improve their diet. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the eNutri app is an effective web-based tool for the automated delivery of PN advice. Furthermore, eNutri was demonstrated to improve short-term diet quality and increase engagement in healthy eating behaviors in UK adults, as compared with population-based healthy eating guidelines. This work represents an important landmark in the field of automatically delivered web-based personalized dietary interventions. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03250858; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03250858