Proactive telehealth apps

The use of mobile devices to encourage people to become fitter and healthier is nothing new.  The more recent development is the use of apps which connect to Smartwatches. As a Smartwatch wearer, I have found that there are some apps which have limited or no use to me, but I do like the apps that sit in the background and measure my inactivity. As an Independent research Consultant I spend  considerable hours every day sat in front of computer screens. As a single dad, I am also active as kids keep you active, well so I thought. The truth of my inactivity was brought home to me when I started wearing my Smartwatch and receiving daily updates on my activity.  When I receive the activity update such as the one in the picture above, I know that I need to be more a to bring the numbers up. 

This nudge is perfect for me. It does not imply that by not doing exercise something bad will happen to me, and on days when it is impossible to exercise at all I might feel bad but, over all, I feel in control of my own health.

The key design features I love about this is that it is non judgemental, it is up to me to exercise, it is my body and my life and I can decide I want to be a couch potato if I want to.  The is no one encouraging me to do anything, but at the end of the week I can see how little or how much I have exercised.

A current failure of this app, like many of its ilk, is its inability to actually detect exercise.  For example, I could do 154 sit ups,  squats  or push ups but the app would not see that as exercise as I am stationary and it requires movement to register activity.  This is a small issue and one that can be countered by manually adding any activity that I do which is not detected.

For people with long term health conditions and people who are couch potatoes this app and smartwatch could be a cost effective method of motivating people to take up activity.  If the NHS supplemented the purchase of Smartwatches of activity bands but also obtained the results from them, this would mean that people who do not exercise could be made to pay back the supplemented part.  For those that do use the watch I can see the benefits being  very high for the NHS in the long term.

When technology turns to help people

For those who follow my twitter feed (@dewsbury) I mentioned how the Xbox’s always aware functionality caused Xboxes to switch on when Aaron Paul says in the advert says ‘Xbox on’ people report their Xboxes switching on (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27827545). This annoying functionality does have its upside as well as the downside.  

With the recent Google IO (https://www.google.com/events/io) it was mentioned that the new Android operating system will have a always aware functionality, so even in the closed state it will still listen for the command ‘OK Google’. This for some might be a little worrying, especially in the light of Facebook’s attempt to be constantly aware and record the sounds in your environment whilst you use its app (http://guardianlv.com/2014/05/facebook-has-new-microphone-application/).

 

Therefore, the benefits of always-aware applications might not appear to outweigh the security and privacy issues.  This was certainly my belief, until I was alerted, by my bother to an article in the ABC news (http://kstp.com/news/stories/S3484579.shtml?cat=127) in which a two year old uses Siri (the voice aware IOS platform) to call for emergency services as her mother suffered from “an autonomic nervous system disorder that causes her to faint”. The child was taught to press the button and say call emergency services, if her mother fell over, which was the case at the time.

As telecare and telehealth devices evolve the standard pendant, based technologies will be surpassed by smarter more common/mundane technologies such as the standard mobile phone.  Many smart phones have the ability to dial numbers through speech input and this will only increase over time as operating systems become smarter. The advent of smart watches will also add to this if they have accelerometers built into them and can determine if a person has fallen.

The rise in health apps (see http://phonesngagdets.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/my-favourite-fitness-app-virtuagym-www.html) can only be a good thing as the poor ones will eventually be weeded out and the best ones will remain. Adding the ability to determine health characteristics is essential to make the move from a mobile phone being a standard communication tool to being a fully interactive useful piece of hardware. 

It is good news that technology is finally being used appropriately to help people in a number of ways. One such way that caught my eye was the Brianwriter (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-brainwriter-the-200-open-source-wearable-for-the-paralyzed-that-can-read-and-write-thoughts/#ftag=RSS56d97e7) which turns your thoughts into drawings and communications.  This was originally designed for people who were paralysed and in many ways is better or more promising than Oculus Rift (http://www.oculusvr.com/) or Google Glass (http://www.google.co.uk/glass/start/).

We are at the dawn of an incredible change in the way in which technology can be used to make people’s live better and facilitate their safety. I just hope that my idealistic dreams is not proved wrong. Technology developed for one thing can reused and re-purposed for something else. My fingers are crossed.