Feasibility and User Acceptance of a Personal Weight Management System Based on Ubiquitous Computing

Abstract

With the fast development of information and communications technology, devices with some computing power are becoming increasingly abundant in the average home, The trend for these devices to also be provided with intercommunication functionality opens up new possibilities for health care, The availability of ubiquitous computing allows the individual to perform health-related measurements, review data or consult guidelines independent of place or time, thus providing the individual with a better means to follow certain treatment programs In this study, we set out to implement a system based on ubiquitous computing for the application of weight management using behavioral feedback, The goals were a) to gain insights in the technical feasibility and caveats of such a system as a basis for setting up more advanced and generic infrastructures, and b) to study the degree to whether people are actually willing to use such a technology-laden system for their health management The results lead us to the conclusion that such a system is possible with the current technology, although many issues need to be solved before generic architectures and implementations are a reality, and that many people, especially those who have serious weight problems, are eager to use such a system.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 25, 2001
Accession Number
ADA410383

Entities

People

  • A. Ahonen
  • A. Maukonen
  • J. Parkka
  • M. Van Gils
  • R. Lappalainen

Organizations

  • Tampere University of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Body Weight
  • Closed Loop Systems
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Data Storage Systems
  • Feedback
  • Health Care
  • Health Services
  • Heart Rate
  • Information Systems
  • Load Monitoring
  • Local Area Networks
  • Mobile Phones
  • Networks
  • Personal Digital Assistants
  • Ubiquitous Computing
  • Wireless Communications

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

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