Implementing 360° Quantified Self for childhood obesity: feasibility study and experiences from a weight loss camp in Qatar

Abstract

BackgroundThe explosion of consumer electronics and social media are facilitating the rise of the Quantified Self (QS) movement where millions of users are tracking various aspects of their daily life using social media, mobile technology, and wearable devices. Data from mobile phones, wearables and social media can facilitate a better understanding of the health behaviors of individuals. At the same time, there is an unprecedented increase in childhood obesity rates worldwide. This is a cause for grave concern due to its potential long-term health consequences (e.g., diabetes or cardiovascular diseases). Childhood obesity is highly prevalent in Qatar and the Gulf Region. In this study we examine the feasibility of capturing quantified-self data from social media, wearables and mobiles within a weight lost camp for overweight children in Qatar.MethodsOver 50 children (9–12 years old) and parents used a wide range of technologies, including wearable sensors (actigraphy), mobile and social media (WhatsApp and Instagram) to collect data related to physical activity and food, that was then integrated with physiological data to gain insights about their health habits.In this paper, we report about the acquired data and visualization techniques following the 360° Quantified Self (360QS) methodology (Haddadi et al., ICHI 587–92, 2015).Results360QS allows for capturing insights on the behavioral patterns of children and serves as a mechanism to reinforce education of their mothers via social media. We also identified human factors, such as gender and cultural acceptability aspects that can affect the implementation of this technology beyond a feasibility study. Furthermore, technical challenges regarding the visualization and integration of heterogeneous and sparse data sets are described in the paper.ConclusionsWe proved the feasibility of using 360QS in childhood obesity through this pilot study. However, in order to fully implement the 360QS technology careful planning and integration in the health professionals’ workflow is needed.Trial RegistrationThe trial where this study took place is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov on 14 November 2016 (NCT02972164).

OBINTER: A Holistic Approach to Catalyse the Self-Management of Chronic Obesity

“…Personalized recommendations will be received in the mobile application and shown in a simple and schematic way to improve their understanding, as illustrated in Figure 4 . It has been proven that digital tools allow to gather information about behaviour patterns in different population groups [ 33 ]; additionally, capturing their lifestyle and communicating with the user through an external device, the mobile phone, makes the intervention less invasive. Recommendations include dietetic guidelines and nutraceutical supplementation if needed.…”

Eat & Tell

“…A common issue in many health monitoring and intervention studies is the decline in self-tracking compliance over time [12,21,34]. One reason is that such self-tracking incentive was deliberately omitted to avoid its confounding effects on the intervention outcomes [21,34].…”

“…The primary goal of our study is to investigate the effectiveness of different loss-framed incentives in improving self-tracking and reporting compliance in a randomized trial. Compared to past self-tracking studies [12,21,34], our Eat & Tell app is the first to demonstrate an integrative approach to link self-tracking data with contextspecific self-report surveys via the use of a unified research and data collection platform, leading to improved user experience.…”

Visualization of Wearable Data and Biometrics for Analysis and Recommendations in Childhood Obesity

“…Data from various sources (social media, mobile, wearables and health records) were collected from subjects and linked using a unique subject identifier. These datasets provided what we have defined as a 360-degree Quantified Self (360QS) view of individuals [2], [3].…”