Current Research Interests
I am interested in the use of technology for both measurement and providing feedback about physical activity behavior. Detailed measurement of physical activity and inactivity can provide invaluable insight into the relationship between activity or sedentary behavior and disease. Because of significant improvements in mobile technology, smart phones can be both a measurement device and a channel for providing feedback in a variety of ways to stimulate behavior change. The Wocket project is funded by the NIH Gene Environment Interaction initiative for the purpose of long-term measurement of physical activity behavior. The future direction of this research is to use this measurement or constant monitoring to provide real-time feedback to the user at critical decision points. Mobile technology is flexible in the mode of feedback that can be provided to the user, and all models of behavior change can be tested or optimized through the use of phone calls, texting, email, and custom applications. In addition, personalized applications can be developed based on the user's needs. This will allow researchers to experiment with behavior change models specifically for children, elderly, or patient populations.
In addition to physical activity and sedentary behavior, measurement of sleep and the interaction of sleep, physical activity and sedentary behavior has also become an interesting area of research. The Wocket system uses a 24 hour design, and can therefore be used to evaluate sleep patterns as well as activity. In addition to the Wocket system, we are looking at the Actigraph and other devices that can be used for both physical activity and sleep.
Physical activity measurement is an important part of evaluating other types of personal monitoring systems. Our lab has also been evaluating personal environmental sensors that are being developed for the primary purpose of measuring exposures and their relationship to health outcomes. Exposure is dependent on both the quality of the air in the breathing space and the exertion of the user, so accelerometers were added to these devices to provide a better measure of the actual intake of the user.
I have used a variety of technology in my evaluations, and these are listed here: custom environmental devices from the Research Triangle Institute and Columbia University, all versions of the Actigraph, Sensewear Pro, the Zephyr Bioharness, several GPS devices, and a variety of mobile technologies including iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and others. These devices are in addition to the Wockets, a custom accelerometer system developed by my colleagues at MIT that uses bluetooth to transmit the data to a mobile phone. The wockets system automatically uploads data to a secure server that is accessed through a browser to view and manipulate data. Recent improvements include the ability to automatically generate feedback to the user through text messaging about the previous days activity and an analysis to catch periods of non-wear by the user and hopefully prompt better compliance.
Help