The recent experience sampling research for December is here! Keep checking this list as more articles are published.
- Adolescent Studies
- Alcohol & Drugs
- Diet & Nutrition
- Emotion & Regulation
- General Psychological Topics
- Medical Topics
- Physical Activity
- Physiological Sensors
- Psychopathology
- Smoking Cessation
- Statistics/Methodology
Adolescent Studies
“This dissertation utilizes two approaches to phenomenological inquiry to examine students’ subjective experiences. First, Chapter 1 provides an overview of the problem of underrepresentation of people with disabilities in STEM careers. Then, Chapter 2 reviews the research literature on classroom motivation, and suggests that students with disabilities may have qualitatively different motivational and affective experiences in their learning environments that are not adequately addressed by prominent theories.”
“The aim of this paper is to investigate the quality of experience of students with and without SEN in everyday life in general and when relating to peers in particular: (1) How do they experience everyday school life vs. leisure time? (2) How much time per week do they spend with peers outside school? and (3) How do they experience those peer contacts?”
Changing Scenarios and Emerging Needs in Technology Enabled Learning (TEL)
“The results of the survey indicated that learners frequently accessed internet and accessibility was not a limitation factor for them. Learners were inclined towards the use of technology enhanced learning opportunities and are using web as well as mobile based platforms.”
Examining Relationships among Choice, Affect, and Engagement in Summer STEM Programs.
“Using data collected from, traditional surveys, and video recordings, we explore relationships among youth’s choice to attend out-of-school time programs (measured through a pre-survey) and their experience of affect (i.e., youth ratings of happiness and excitement) and engagement (i.e., youth experience sampling ratings of concentration and effort) during program activities.”
“To provide preliminary evidence in support of using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), a real-time data capture method involving repeated assessments, to measure dietary intake in children by examining the concordance of children’s dietary reports through EMA and 24 h recall.”
Adolescents’ Daily Romantic Experiences and Negative Mood: A Dyadic, Intensive Longitudinal Study.
“Romantic relationships, although increasingly normative during adolescence, also present unique developmental challenges that can portend psychological difficulties. Underlying these difficulties may be the degree to which daily romantic transactions potentiate fluctuations in negative mood. The present study examined associations between adolescents’ daily romantic relationship experiences and their same-day negative affective states (i.e., fluctuations in high-arousal, aversive mood).”
Interparental Interactions and Adolescent Mood: A Daily Diary Approach
“The current study used a daily diary approach to complement the existing literature by assessing relations between aspects of marital interactions and adolescent reported daily mood using a within-family approach. We hypothesized that parents’ emotionality during interactions, the severity of their marital conflicts, and the degree to which their conflicts were resolved would be associated with their adolescents’ daily moods.”
“Although prior research suggests that stress may play a role in parent’s use of food-related parenting practices, it is unclear whether certain types of stress (e.g., transient, chronic) result in different food-related parenting practices. Identifying whether and how transient (i.e., momentary; parent/child conflict) and chronic (i.e., long-term; unemployment >6 months) sources of stress are related to parent food-related parenting practices is important with regard to childhood obesity.”
“Mobile interventions promoting positive body image are lacking. This study presents a randomized controlled evaluation of BodiMojo, a mobile application (app) intervention grounded in self-compassion to promote positive body image.”
“There is growing evidence that supporting self-management of Juvenile Arthritis can benefit both patients and professionals. Young people with Juvenile Arthritis and their healthy peers increasingly use mobile technologies to access information and support in day-to-day life. Therefore, a user-led, rigorously developed and evaluated mobile app could be valuable for facilitating young people’s self-management of Juvenile Arthritis.”
Adolescent Emotion Network Dynamics in Daily Life and Implications for Depression
“This paper extended research on emotion network density to adolescents and examined:1) associations between emotion network density and a standard measure of emotion regulation and 2)associations between emotion network density and symptoms of depression.”
Alcohol & Drugs
Substance Use and Professional Identity
“This project explores psychoactive substance use among professionals and students in professional programs in Canada, rationales for use, strategies to manage use and potential consequences, and factors within professional education and culture that influence decisions about use. The intent of this study is to uncover social processes through which professional contexts influence substance use. The researchers sought to explore how professionals and professional students described their own decision-making about substance use and their perceptions of professional influences.”
“Cannabis dependence, more time using marijuana in the moment, and using for social facilitation purposes were positively associated with using marijuana in the context of being with others. Daily users had more variability in terms of the social context of their use. This study illustrates the complex relationship between social context and marijuana use.”
Diet & Nutrition
Emotion & Regulation
Are Emotionally Intelligent People More Emotionally Stable? An Experience Sampling Study
“It is assumed that the individuals with high emotional intelligence (EI) are characterized by more positive and stable moods. However, most studies analyze how EI is related to emotional traits or momentary assessments of mood; there are almost no findings on EI relationships with mood dynamics. The present study fills this gap. Two research questions were asked. How mood dynamics characteristics are related to each other and to what extent are they independent? Which aspects of EI are related to particular characteristics of mood dynamics?”
Hearts on Our Sleeves: Emotions Experienced by Service-Learning Faculty
“Results revealed that service-learning faculty experience a number of emotional highs and lows related to class logistics, community partners, and student engagement. Additionally, more experienced service-learning faculty handled their emotions differently than newer faculty. .”
“Individuals respond to stress by seeking support from others, yet scholars have rarely addressed support seeking over newer media such as Facebook, and the factors which might influence such behavior. Using a daily diary method and a college sample, we tested the relationship between stress and support seeking in person, over Facebook, and on anonymous online forums, considering four moderators: extraversion, social network size, rejection sensitivity, and the sensitivity of the stressor.”
The Role of Co-Occurring Emotions and Personality Traits in Anger Expression
“The main aim of the current study was to examine the role of co-occurring emotions and their interactive effects with the Big Five personality traits in anger expression. Everyday anger expression (“anger-in” and “anger-out” behavior) was studied with the experience-sampling method in a group of 110 participants for 14 consecutive days on 7 random occasions per day.”
A process-oriented perspective examining the relationships among daily coping, stress, and affect.
“We assess the daily relationships between age, three functional coping strategies, and positive and negative affect while accounting for the individual’s cognitive appraisal of the severity and controllability of their encountered stressor. We collected 56 days of daily data from participants in the Notre Dame Study of Healthy & Well-Being assessing affect, the most bothersome event experienced each day, and coping strategies used to deal with that event.”
A Multivariate Statistical Model for Emotion Dynamics.
“In emotion dynamic research, one distinguishes various elementary emotion dynamic features, which are studied using intensive longitudinal data. Typically, each emotion dynamic feature is quantified separately, which hampers the study of relationships between various features. Further, the length of the observed time series in emotion research is limited and often suffers from a high percentage of missing values. In this article, we propose a vector autoregressive Bayesian dynamic model that is useful for emotion dynamic research.”
Emotions in everyday life during social movements: Prospective predictions of mental health.
“This experience sampling study investigated the impact of a social movement on everyday emotional reactivity, variability, instability, and persistence, and whether and how these predicted subsequent psychological distress and well-being among 108 community-dwelling adults. Fifty-four participants reported momentary events and emotions 5 times daily over 7 days during the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong.”
“As hypothesized, we observed significant concurrent effects of internalized HIV stigma on emotion dysregulation as well as autoregressive associations of internalized HIV stigma and emotion dysregulation with themselves across the day. Furthermore, findings revealed direct effects of internalized HIV stigma on later emotion dysregulation and increased likelihood of stimulant use, but no direct effect of emotion dysregulation on stimulant use.”
The bipolarity of affect and depressive symptoms
“In three experience sampling studies, we examine how positive and negative affective states are related within people’s emotional experience in daily life and how the degree of bipolarity of this relation is associated with depressive symptom severity.”
Cyclists’ Anger As Determinant of Near Misses Involving Different Road Users.
“The present research aims to investigate, for the first time, the effects of cycling anger toward different types of road users on near misses involving such road users and near misses in general. Using a daily diary web-based questionnaire, we collected data about daily trips, bicycle use, near misses experienced, cyclist’s anger and demographic information from 254 Spanish cyclists.”
Augmenting Behavioral Healthcare: Mobilizing Services with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
“The mobilization of healthcare to smartphones and other devices facilitates the migration of services beyond the walls of the traditional doctor’s office and into the homes and everyday lives of those who need it most. Ultimately, innovative applications by researchers, clinicians, and practitioners prove VR and augmented reality (AR) technologies as effective, efficient, and widely accessible tools in mental healthcare interventions.”
An Education in Digital Health
“This paper describes the concept of digital health and the benefits and limitations of certain digital platforms, specifically those related to social media, and explains the rise of “informed patients” and a new digital environment for patients and physicians. Additionally, useful resources providing free open-access medical education are explored, with special focus on the benefits available to medical students using Web 2.0 platforms as an accessory tool for learning.”
“While self-administered mobile app-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has shown efficiency and effectiveness over the past decade, attempts to address automatic and negative beliefs have been lacking. The purpose of this study was to introduce and verify a mobile app that directly intervenes in dysfunctional thoughts. This app-based treatment includes recognizing automatic and negative thoughts of the protagonist of scenarios, writing advice directly to the main character, and sharing advice provided by other participants.”
General Psychological Topics
Psychological and Situational Predictors of Caffeine Consumption in Daily Life
“The current study examined predictors of caffeine consumption among college students using an experience sampling methodology.”
“Exercise behaviour change involves multiple experiences with success and failure. The Model of Action Phases (MAP) offers a dynamic account of how success and failure influence both immediate evaluations and future decisions and actions. However, predictions from the MAP have not been formally tested.”
“Existing assessments of intellectual humility (IH)—a key component of wisdom—do not examine its manifestation in daily life while sufficiently focusing on the core idea of the construct: owning up to one’s intellectual shortcomings. The present research sought to examine situational contingencies underlying daily manifestations of IH-relevant characteristics.”
“The objectives of this study were to describe the availability of data, to examine response patterns, and to analyze factors related to EMA prompt compliance in a dyadic EMA study with mothers and children.”
Lower sleep duration is associated with reduced autobiographical memory specificity
“Sleep can have an important influence on memory. However, it is unclear whether there is any relation between sleep quality and the specificity with which autobiographical memories are retrieved, a key factor associated with vulnerability for, and the presence of, depression and other psychiatric diagnoses. The present study provides the first investigation of the association between sleep quality and autobiographical memory specificity.”
“Polysomnography (PSG), actigraphy, diary, and retrospective questionnaire assessments yield different estimates of sleep duration. Hostility, depressive symptoms, and perceptions of poor health were associated with the magnitude of differences among some estimates. These findings may be useful in understanding the health consequences of short or long self-reported sleep duration and for guiding investigator decisions about choices of measures in specific populations.”
Engaging a Digital Health Behavior Audience: A Case Study
“In this chapter, we explore two potential methods of using social media sites to engage people and seek to use data from an academic Twitter handle to study whether they can be successfully applied to engage an audience in public health research. The two methods used are: (1) combining Twitter text with pictures to garner more engagement, and (2) inclusion of hashtags with text that is relevant and timely.”
A Breastfeed-Promoting Mobile App Intervention: Usability and Usefulness Study
“There exists a major knowledge gap on how mobile health apps could support breastfeeding in Thailand. To address these gaps, MoomMae has been developed with the intention to support Thai women in breastfeeding outside of their homes and in keeping their feeding records.”
“PLUS Malaysia Berhad also introduces ‘PLUS Mobile App’, a mobile application that enables the expressway user to know about the latest highway traffic information. The idea to develop a PLUSRonda assist mobile application using GPS for automatic incident location detection, this mobile application will alert the nearest PLUSRonda around and send notification to get assistance from PLUSRonda directly and efficiently.”
“Mobile health (mHealth) apps have significantly increased in use and popularity in recent years. However, the initial experience of users with these apps is poorly understood. MindMax is an mHealth wellbeing app, designed and championed by the Australian Football League Players Association (AFLPA), which aims to harness the high levels of engagement with video games and widespread interest in sports to connect with users. Our qualitative research uses MindMax as a case study to understand the initial experiences of seven users.”
The Predictors and Consequences of Prejudice in Online Video Games
“In a series of four studies I explore several possible explanations for why prejudice is more common in video games than in other contexts and what effect prejudice in this environment has on gamers. Using a daily diary study I found that female gamers experience more bigoted comments than male gamers and are more strongly affected than are male gamers. These four studies provide an introduction to the online gaming environment and lay a foundation for future work to reduce prejudice in online gaming.”
The Digital and In Silico Therapeutics Revolution
“Digital therapeutics, i.e., adding digital components to traditional therapeutics, can improve or even prevent diseases through behavioral change in cases where traditional drugs have not succeeded. The inclusion of digital components provides significant value not only to the therapeutics by improving their effectiveness, but also to the drug development process by reducing costs and increasing efficiency.”
From Quantified Self to Quality of Life
“The evidence of causality between Quantified Self (QS) and Quality of Life (QoL) is still being established, as only data from limited cases and domains exist so far. In this chapter, we discuss the state of this evidence via a semi-systematic review of the exemplary QS practices documented in 609 QS practitioners’ talks and a review of the 438 latest available personal wearable technologies enabling QS. We discuss the challenges and opportunities for the QS to become an integral part of the future of healthcare and QoL-driven solutions. Some of the opportunities include using QS technologies as different types of affordances supporting the goal-oriented actions by the individual, in turn improving their QoL.”
Making the most of the waiting room: Electronic patient engagement, a mixed methods study
“The purpose of this study was to explore whether patients with musculoskeletal conditions would agree to use digital technologies to learn about research registries and make a decision about signing up whilst in the clinic waiting room.”
Being mindful at work and at home: Buffering effects in the stressor–detachment model
“In this daily diary study, we examined the moderating role of employee domain-specific mindfulness within the stressor–detachment model. According to the stressor–detachment model, emotional and quantitative demands should be associated with decreased psychological detachment after work, which in turn is associated with decreased well-being (i.e., low positive affect and high negative affect) at bedtime. Moreover, we proposed that both mindfulness at work and home should buffer the relations between job demands and psychological detachment and between psychological detachment and well-being.”
Momentary Affect and the Optimism-Health Relationship
“The aim of this intensive longitudinal study was to examine the moderating effect of affect on the optimism-health relationship and to separately consider valence and arousal, the basic dimensions of affect. Findings provide support for the relevance of a two-factor model of dispositional optimism and the importance of separate consideration of the basic affect dimensions in the understanding of the processes between optimism and health..”
DIGITAL PSYCHIATRY AND DIGITAL PSYCHOLOGY: BEYOND “TRADITIONAL” TELETHERAPY
“In psychiatry and psychology, digital technology offers the potential to provide new models of complementary therapies and interventions that lead to mental health therapeutics outside of the clinical office. The effectiveness of teletherapy already has a solid evidence base and digital health tools offer the opportunity to make health services, including mental health services, more accessible and attractive”
Biopsychosocial Correlates of Discrimination in Daily Life: A Review
“This review examines research utilizing EMA and daily diaries to study discrimination within individuals in real-time and natural settings. We identified studies of discrimination related to race, sex, weight, and sexual orientation, and examined the prevalence and frequency of discrimination in daily life, the psychosocial correlates of discrimination, contextual factors related to discriminatory experiences, and moderators of the effects of discrimination. We highlight the benefits of using EMA and daily diaries in the study of discrimination and biopsychosocial processes, and provide suggestions for future work on these associations. EMA data suggest that discrimination occurs more frequently than might be clear from survey research and is associated with poor mental health in daily life.”
“Zooming into reduction-oriented job crafting among employees, next to minimizing demands (i.e., making a job less strenuous), we introduced optimizing demands (i.e., simplifying the job and making work processes more efficient) and suggested that optimizing demands should be positively related to work engagement, whereas minimizing demands negatively related to work engagement. Moreover, we suggested that both forms of reduction-oriented crafting can be transferred among colleagues, and this will particularly occur in jobs that are high on demands (workload and emotional demands), low on resources (autonomy), and when the colleagues have a high-quality relationship.”
“The present study tests the feasibility of experience sampling in testing hypotheses on algorithmic mechanics, informed by literature on their underlying commercial and technological logics. The proposed methodology is empirically tested on the case of mobile dating app Tinder.”
A Study on the Daily Life Experience of Medical Students using the Experience Sampling Method
“The purpose of this study was to investigate the daily life experiences of medical students and to explore gender differences in these experiences using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) as the method….Males spent more time in learning places such as schools, libraries, etc., whereas females spent their time in personal places, including their homes, dormitories, etc. Males undertook more learning activities than did females, and females undertook more social/leisure activities and basic life activities than did male students (χ²=18.753, p=.001). They were in a learning place and performing learning activities. There were significant perceptual differences between males and females about their flow levels, competency levels, and difficulty levels, based on the activity type.”
“This controlled experiment shows that false-feedback about sleep, in the absence of objective sleep differences, biases appraisal of daytime symptoms. This confirms a potential pathway in the development and maintenance of insomnia but also has important implications for wearable devices that claim to measure “objective sleep”, yet provide inaccurate data relative to gold-standard measurement.”
Self-Control and the Reasons Behind Our Goals
“We ask here whether individual differences in self-control may be associated with an individual’s likelihood of “wanting to” pursue current goals, operationalized as the momentary experience of autonomous motivation.”
“We hypothesized that (a) daily sexual arousal would be positively associated with likelihood of engaging in sex and condomless anal sex (CAS) and (b) Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) scores would moderate these associations such that the associations would be stronger among those with higher IGT scores.”
“We found that objectively measured social behaviors are associated with concurrent viral-Immune Risk Profile scores over and above the effects of psychological distress and that psychological distress may be linked to biomarkers of immune health through social integration.”
Retrospecting on Work and Productivity A Study on Self-Monitoring Software Developers’ Work
“The purpose of this study was to investigate the daily life experiences of medical students and to explore gender differences in these experiences using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) as the method….Males spent more time in learning places such as schools, libraries, etc., whereas females spent their time in personal places, including their homes, dormitories, etc. Males undertook more learning activities than did females, and females undertook more social/leisure activities and basic life activities than did male students (χ²=18.753, p=.001). They were in a learning place and performing learning activities. There were significant perceptual differences between males and females about their flow levels, competency levels, and difficulty levels, based on the activity type.”
“The current study examined the within-person association between providing daily assistance to aging parents with disability and adult children’s daily mood in the context of early relationship with parents.”
“Currently in Bermuda, there is limited access to information about scuba diving sites and shops. Research shows that smartphones and mobile applications are a popular tool used by tourists during travel to look up information and make decisions. The current study aims to design and develop a mobile application that gives access to information and is appealing to users.”
Medical Topics
“There are relatively few published data on the use of mobile technology to enhance post-stroke care and outcomes. Information on the utility and key characteristics of mobile health applications (APPS) in the post-discharge care of stroke patients could inform their successful implementation into routine clinical practice.”
Understanding patient experience: a deployment study in cardiac remote monitoring
“Through interviews around the deployment of a mobile app that enables patients to collaborate with clinicians, we unpack experiences in six themes and present narratives of patients’ lifeworlds. We find that patients’ emotions are grounded in negative feelings (uncertainty, anxiety, loss of hope) and that positive experiences (relief, reassurance, safety) arise from getting feedback on symptoms and from continuous and comforting interaction with clinicians.”
Digital Health Innovation: A Toolkit to Navigate From Concept to Clinical Testing
“Digital health technologies such as smartphone apps, Web-based platforms, and wearable devices are rapidly emerging as promising interventions for acute and chronic disease management, particularly in the field of cardiovascular medicine. However, there is limited guidance on how to effectively develop and rigorously test digital health interventions (DHIs).”
“The study aims to understand the impact of the use of a mobile based remote app on improving quality of care (QOC), health outcomes and quality of life (QOL) in IBD patients.”
Daily communal coping in couples with type 2 diabetes: Links to mood and self-care
“We sought to determine whether daily communal coping was linked to daily mood and self-care behavior and examined one potential mechanism that may explain these links: perceived emotional responsiveness.”
Design of a Mobile–App for Non-Invasively Detecting High Blood Cholesterol Using Eye Images
“Medical research proves that high blood cholesterol is identifiable through the iris portion of the human eyes. Currently, a clinical blood test is the only method used in identifying high cholesterol. This study proposed an IT-based approach to prove the concept of monitoring cholesterol content in the blood using the human irises. We have developed a conceptual framework and a smartphone application aimed at capturing an image of the eye and analyzing it for symptoms associated with high blood cholesterol.”
Technology and chronic disease management
“In their Review on structured self-management education for people with diabetes, Sudesna Chatterjee and colleagues discuss the promise of web-based platforms and new technologies in enhancing the management of chronic diseases. However, not all digital health interventions have similar success when robust study designs are used, even in the context of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.”
Diabetes and technology in 2030: a utopian or dystopian future?
“The ability of an individual living with diabetes to have human-to-human contact with their healthcare provider is not keeping pace with the number of people developing diabetes. From a futurist perspective, however, this dichotomy of diabetes care represents an opportunity for digital healthcare. The focus of technological innovation is unlikely to be the replacement of the multidisciplinary diabetes team but rather the provision of meaningful individual and family support between clinic visits and, on a larger scale, the facilitation of population health management for diabetes.”
Bridging the dichotomy of actual versus aspirational digital health
“The future of digital health is bright. Enthusiasm for smartphone apps, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, machine learning and more in health care is no longer a niche interest, but rather mainstream fascination. From patient groups creating technology solutions for long-term conditions, to large technology companies like Google entering the digital health space, digital health enables new voices and perspectives to partake in advancing health care.”
“This chapter summarizes the current state of mHealth, important strides that have been made in strengthening the global mHealth evidence base, and key ‘best practices’ in scaling mHealth for achieving universal healthcare.”
In Search of a Digital Health Compass to Navigate the Health System
“This paper reflects on the digital health compass to navigate the health system using one’s own data. Health information technology standards are at the core of the compass, to tap the potential of shared aggregate data and sustain trust. The notion of the patient summary as a window to one’s health is used as an example to drive our call for action for health informatics to develop methods to calibrate the digital health compass and feed on ‘my data’, respecting ‘my decision’, to fuel ‘our ePower’.”
25-hydroxyvitamin D and long menstrual cycles in a prospective cohort study
“Lower levels of 25(OH)D are associated with longer follicular phase and an overall longer menstrual cycle. Our results are consistent with other evidence supporting vitamin D’s role in the reproductive axis, which may have broader implications for reproductive success.”
Working together for change: The future of BC’s health is in our hands.
“The next generation of family doctors, specialists, and medical students will practise in a decentralized digital world and rely on machines to serve the needs of smart patients and smart communities, delivering health services and compassionate care anytime, anywhere. Innovation is everywhere in BC’s economy and we are fortunate to have a large and talented group of innovators in the life sciences, health IT, digital health, the creative industries, and technology. This digital health ecosystem will be key to building a marketplace where private citizens and health care providers can buy the products and services they need.”
“The Urticaria Activity Score summed over 7 days (UAS7) assesses the itch severity and hive count in chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) using once- or twice-daily diary-based documentation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the comparability of twice-daily versus once-daily versions of the UAS and the resulting UAS7 values.”
VA FitHeart, a Mobile App for Cardiac Rehabilitation: Usability Study.
“Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) improves outcomes for patients with ischemic heart disease or heart failure but is underused. New strategies to improve access to and engagement in CR are needed. There is considerable interest in technology-facilitated home CR. However, little is known about patient acceptance and use of mobile technology for CR. The aim of this study was to develop a mobile app for technology-facilitated home CR and seek to determine its usability.”
“Community-based strategies to test for HIV, hepatitis B virus (HBV), and sickle cell disease (SCD) have expanded opportunities to increase the proportion of pregnant women who are aware of their diagnosis. In order to use this information to implement evidence-based interventions, these results have to be available to skilled health providers at the point of delivery. Most electronic health platforms are dependent on the availability of reliable Internet connectivity and, thus, have limited use in many rural and resource-limited settings. Here we describe our work on the development and deployment of an integrated mHealth platform that is able to capture medical information, including test results, and encrypt it into a patient-held smartcard that can be read at the point of delivery without the need for an Internet connection.”
Developing a Mobile App for Prevention and Treatment of Pressure Injuries.
“This descriptive study describes the planning and development of a mobile application (app) for prevention and treatment of pressure injuries for use by providers in a university research center. The app delineates risk factors for pressure injury development, provides an evaluation of the wound, recommends wound cleansing procedures, performs pressure injury staging, and recommends treatment interventions.”
E-Health Care: Promise or Peril for Chronic Illness
“The study by Vriezinga et al in this volume of The Journal tests the hypothesis that web-based, patient-centered medical technology may be able to reduce health disparities for individuals with chronic illness. Specifically, their results suggest that online consultation may be more cost-effective than in-person consultation for patients being evaluated for celiac disease.”
“Collectively, this body of work underscored the distressing nature of both weight changes and weight management efforts, in the context of reducing risk for breast cancer. Women reported experiencing more negative emotional consequences when their weight was higher than usual, both acutely after self-weighing and chronically over time in the first-year post-treatment.”
“The aim of this work is to present the methodological approaches as well as the principal results of two relatively new centers of expertise in Mali and Cameroon intended to cultivate this vision of digital governance in the domain of health and to train professionals to implement the projects. Both centers were created due to initiatives of organizations of civil society. The center in Mali developed toward an economic interest group and then to collaboration with healthcare and university organizations. The same process is underway at the Cameroon center. “
OP28 Health Apps: A Proposed Framework To Guide Clinical Risk Assessment
“Globally, health systems are struggling with reliably appraising the safety and efficacy of rapidly changing digital health interventions whilst allowing useful innovations to be rapidly adopted. Assessment and regulation of the large number of health apps should be proportional to their clinical risk, but there is large uncertainty about suitable criteria to assess risk (1). We aimed to identify criteria for assessing clinical risks associated with different types of health apps. Our work builds on previous studies that identified some of the risks that health apps can pose and contextual factors that can moderate these risks (2,3).”
OP123 Health Technology Assessment In Digital Health: A Rapid Approach To Assess Health Apps
“The Health Technology Assessment (HTA) of mobile health applications involves significant challenges including rapid product development cycles, sparse evidence and uncertainty over the economic impact. However apps also provide unique opportunities, such as their potential reach and use of real-world data, which will facilitate their contribution to healthcare delivery. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), alongside other agencies, has been piloting the development of a health app assessment programme. This presentation reports the results of a study about the development of the Health App Briefing (HAB) which is designed as the output from a rapid assessment of the effectiveness and cost-saving potential of apps to inform decision makers in the United Kingdom National Health Service.”
Use of a Smartphone Application to Reduce Hypoglycemia in Type 1 Diabetes: A Pilot Study
“Hypoglycemia and hypoglycemia unawareness are common in long-standing type 1 diabetes (T1D). This pilot study examined the real-world use of a smartphone application (app), which receives meter readings and logs hypoglycemic symptoms, causes, and treatments to reduce hypoglycemia.”
“Truweight helps overweight and obese clients to lose weight through structured diet plans, nutritional counseling, well researched super food kit and mobile app.”
“Diabetes technology in the form of medical devices, digital health and big data analytics have the potential to improve clinical care and psychosocial support, resulting in lower rates of acute and chronic complications, decreased burden of diabetes care, and improved quality of life.”
Development and content validation of a patient-reported endometriosis pain daily diary.
“Endometriosis-related pain is best captured with patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures, however, assessment of endometriosis-related pain in clinical trials has been difficult in the absence of a reliable and valid PRO instrument. We describe the development of the Endometriosis Pain Daily Diary (EPDD), an electronic PRO developed as a survey instrument to assess endometriosis-related pain and its impact on patients’ lives.”
PP081 Relation Between Pain And Treatment/Activity Based On Mobile App Data
“Recently, a number of mobile apps to record symptoms and medication by patients themselves have been developed. These apps are expected to improve the patients’ symptoms through self-management, and to enable a smooth decision making through effective communication between doctors and patients.”
An improved privacy-aware system for objective and subjective ecological momentary assessment
“The technical components and software features of a new hearing-aid compatible smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) system are presented in this paper. EMA is an assessment strategy that seeks to minimise instrumental infliction on the measured entity while data is gathered at multiple points of time. This work builds upon an already developed and deployed smartphone-based system. Objective data is gathered in the form of acoustical features, while subjective data is collected via automatised questionnaires. Since linking objective acoustical measures to subjective assessments is particularly promising with regard to the hearing rehabilitation process, our system has been specially tailored for hearing aid users.”
“The aim of this study was to design and evaluate CALD Assist, a tablet app to assist communication between patients and allied health clinicians in the absence of an interpreter. CALD Assist uses key phrases translated into common languages and uses pictorial, written, and voice-over prompts to facilitate communication during basic patient assessment.”
“Studies investigating the prevalence, cause, and consequence of multiple sclerosis (MS) fatigue typically use single measures that implicitly assume symptom-stability over time, neglecting information about if, when, and why severity fluctuates. We aimed to examine the extent of moment-to-moment and day-to-day variability in fatigue in relapsing-remitting MS and healthy individuals, and identify daily life determinants of fluctuations.”
Merging Digital Medicine and Economics: Two Moving Averages Unlock Biosignals for Better Health.
“This short note aims to demonstrate that within the world of digital medicine and engineering, simpler algorithms can offer effective and efficient solutions, where traditionally more complex algorithms have been used. Moreover, the note demonstrates that bridging different research disciplines is very beneficial and yields valuable insights and results.”
The impact of digital health technologies on tuberculosis treatment: a systematic review.
“Digital technologies are increasingly harnessed to support treatment of persons with tuberculosis (TB). Since in-person directly observed treatment (DOT) can be resource intensive and challenging to implement, these technologies may have the potential to improve adherence and clinical outcomes. We reviewed the effect of these technologies on TB treatment adherence and patient outcomes.”
“The experience sampling method reliably infers the incidence of seasonal allergies as indicated by the strong correlation (r = 0.93, P < .003) between the reported lack of wellness and the number of antihistamines prescribed by General Practitioners.”
“NeuroScreen, a highly automated, easy-to-use, tablet-based screening test to detect NCI among English- and isiXhosa-speaking South African HIV patients demonstrated robust sensitivity and specificity to detect NCI when administered by lay health workers. NeuroScreen could help make screening for NCI more feasible.”
Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROM) as A Preoperative Assessment Tool.
“Efficient and effective assessments of social and behavioral determinants of health, functional status, health literacy, patient’s perception of health, and preferences for self-management may improve postoperative management and surgical outcomes, particularly among vulnerable patients undergoing elective surgery who might have subtle physical, social, or psychological deficits or challenges, otherwise missed upon routine evaluation. Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) can be used to effectively and efficiently collect these factors in the preoperative period, thereby identifying areas that can be intervened preemptively.”
Redesigning Healthcare Systems to Provide Better and Faster Care at a Lower Cost
“In The Netherlands, we have developed and successfully applied our Health Management Practice (HMP) Model on a large number of telemedicine services using the “start small, think big” approach, leading to fully integrated telemedicine services. Results show a 70–96% reduction in hospital visits in dermatology and ophthalmology, which translates into an immediate cost reduction of 18%. Response times of 4–5 working hours and the learning effect have a high impact on the quality of care delivered. Telemonitoring programs in mental health have shown that involving the patient as an active actor can result in more motivation and ownership of their own health. Telemedicine also allows hospitals to remain focused on delivering high-quality specialized care.”
“Fears of cancer recurrence (FCR) in patients with breast cancer are hypothesised to develop over the period from diagnosis, through treatment and thereafter. A crucial point may be the contact that patients have with their therapeutic radiographer in review appointments. The study aimed to (1) describe and categorise the content of the identified emotional talk, and (2) consider the evidence for an association of content with FCR trajectory.”
How Digital Health Will Deliver Precision Medicine
“Digital health can be briefly described as the intersect between smartphone-enabled mobile computational and connectivity capabilities, but also encompass genomics, information systems, wireless sensors, cloud computing and machine learning with modern healthcare. Globally, we are seeing an increase in the desire for patients to play an active role in their healthcare management. Combined, digital technology and patient engagement, advances the possibility of providing personalised medicine. “
Mobile Health Technology for Improving Symptom Management in Low Income Persons Living with HIV.
“Persons living with HIV (PLWH) are living longer but experiencing more adverse symptoms associated with the disease and its treatment. This study aimed to examine the impact of a mHealth application (app) comprised of evidence-based self-care strategies on the symptom experience of PLWH.”
A Patient Centric Nursing Mobile App Redesign.
“Sanatorio Finochietto has a nursing mobile app that allows safely preparing and administering medications. Hospitalized patients care experience is influenced by the system, the care process and nurse response, in this context, technology acts as a facilitator for care and humanized treatment. A “Patient-Centered Management System” would assist caregivers and patients to make individualized decisions about optimal care. This paper describe a paradigm shift to a mobile patient centered nursing application.”
“Requirements engineering of software products for elderly people faces some special challenges to ensure a maximum of user acceptance. Within the scope of a research project, a web-based platform and a mobile app are approached to enable people to live in their own home as long as possible. “
“The first study phase is aimed at establishing feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness. The second phase focuses on long-term impact on psychosocial outcomes, healthcare utilisation and clinic/provider adoption/sustainable implementation using a propensity score matched parallel group study design. Primary outcomes are changes in anxiety symptoms (GAD-7) and quality of life (Short-Form Health Survey) between baseline and 6-month follow-ups, comparing control and intervention. Secondary outcomes include provider and patient satisfaction, patient engagement, durability of changes in anxiety symptoms and quality of life over 12 months and the impact of Lantern on healthcare utilisation over 12 months.”
“The proportion of reporting of patient satisfaction was low; practitioner satisfaction was poorly represented. There may be implications for the suitability of administering e-health, a medium for capturing further meta-evidence needs to be established and used as best practice for implicated studies in future.”
“This study was conducted with the objective of developing infrastructure comprising data processing algorithms, blood glucose (BG) prediction models, and an appropriate mobile app for patients’ electronic record management to guide BG prediction-based personalized recommendations for patients with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).”
“The goal of this work was to validate the Health Information Technology Usability Evaluation Scale (Health-ITUES), a customizable usability assessment instrument in a sample of community-dwelling adults who were testing the use of a new mobile health (mHealth) technology.”
Sociodemographic correlates of psychological symptoms of premenstrual syndrome
“Prospective observational study was carried on 247 females in the reproductive age group. The participants were given the list of 18 preliminary symptoms and asked to encircle the symptoms they suffer during later part of the menstrual cycle in any of the last 3 cycles. In participants reporting ≥3 symptoms, the psychological symptoms were analysed and their association was observed with various sociodemographic parameters (age, location- rural/urban, marital status, parity, education, occupation).”
“A mHealth app was designed to assist the CKD early diagnosis and self-monitoring considering quality attributes such as safety, effectiveness, and usability. A global Kappa value of 0.7119 showed a substantial degree of agreement between the app and three nephrologists.”
“The objective of this study was to outline the theoretical foundation and iterative process of designing the “Sleep Bunny,” a technology-assisted sleep extension intervention including a mobile phone app, wearable sleep tracker, and brief telephone coaching.”
Physical Activity
PT and OT Helper Golf Elbow: a mobile app user guide for getting a grip on medial epicondylalgia.
“PT and OT Helper offers a number of injury-specific apps, including one targeted at golfer’s elbow (GE), a musculoskeletal condition associated with pain over the medial epicondyle.1 Consistent with other apps in the PT and OT Helper range, this user-friendly app (iOS version: 121 MB; and Android version: 95.1 MB) provides a bank of exercises designed to assist clinicians and patients in the treatment of GE.”
Throw Like a Pro V. 2.0 mobile app review
“The primary clinical focus of the app is injury prevention, closely followed by enhancing pitching performance via best rehabilitation practices (ie, stretches, warm-up, cool-down, improving core strength). It is an easy-to-use app for all involved in baseball, from players to parents, to coaches, to medical professionals.”
Daily Meaning Salience and Physical Activity in Previously Inactive Exercise Initiates.
“Individuals living with more experienced meaning, or meaning salience, may be more likely to engage in health behaviors including physical activity. This study examined daily meaning salience and physical activity in previously inactive exercise initiates.”
“Exercise behaviour change involves multiple experiences with success and failure. The Model of Action Phases (MAP) offers a dynamic account of how success and failure influence both immediate evaluations and future decisions and actions. However, predictions from the MAP have not been formally tested.”
“Using new technology, is one way to bridge the gap between what patients need and what health care can offer. This study evaluates a new digital health care platform and will show if use of a smartphone-app to promote daily steps is an effective and feasible method to increase physical activity and improve clinical markers in patients with diabetes type 2.”
“Pitolisant, the first potent and highly selective Histamine H3-receptor antagonist/inverse agonist in clinics, activating the histaminergic neurons, demonstrated its efficacy over 7-8 weeks in reducing Excessive Daytime Sleepiness(Lancet Neurol. 2013) and cataplexy attacks (Lancet Neurol. 2017) in adult narcoleptic patients (NP) with or without cataplexy. We compared the anti-cataplectic efficacy results in different phase II and III Randomized Clinical Trials (RCT).”
“Previous research indicates that social relatedness is beneficial to physical health; however, findings on the relative strength of the relationship between these variables have been inconsistent. The present study employed cross-sectional survey (Study 1) and a daily diary survey (Study 2) to examine the link between social relatedness and physical health by age.”
Digital Health and Obesity: How Technology Could Be the Culprit and Solution for Obesity
“Advances in technology over the past century have directly contributed to the growing worldwide obesity epidemic. Streamlined food production, changes in the macronutrient profile of food, and mass marketing of unhealthy food to children have all contributed to an increase in caloric intake. Decreased physical activity and an increase in sedentary behavior both stem from industrialization of the workplace. Conversely technology can help integrate proven behavioral modification models into patients lifestyles and provide patients with biometric data previously unavailable. Web based interventions offer patients access to information and counseling on demand. Relatively new and gaining in popularity, wearables offer patients immediate access to vital signs, biometric data, and various other physiologic and social parameters.”
“We envision an important role of personalized, miniaturized Information Technologies (IT), specifically smart watches—supporting the patient’s self-management efforts in any daily life context, acting as a reminder for specific activities and documenting the patient’s progress via checklist-based approach. We delineate the requirements and design choices for the WATCH-list—an example of self-management service for obesity patients’ compliance to diet programs. We discuss the chronic illness self-management and role of IT in increasing the patient’s self-efficacy of activities contributing to health, in turn increasing the patient’s compliance to these activities and therefore facilitating better health outcomes in a long term. “
“Average valence and arousal were higher on days when the person had run than on the next day, and higher the day after a run than on the days after that. Over the course of the day of a run, valence and arousal declined significantly as the time since the run increased. Physically fitter participants had more positive valence overall, and this was particularly true when they had not run recently. There was some evidence of higher-dose (i.e., longer and faster) runs being associated with lower arousal on the next and subsequent days. Gender did not moderate associations between running and valence or arousal.”
“Participation in regular physical activity holds key benefits for cancer survivors, yet few cancer survivors meet physical activity recommendations. This study aimed to develop and pilot test a mHealth app referral service aimed at assisting cancer survivors to increase their physical activity. In particular, the study sought to examine feasibility and acceptability of the service and determine preliminary efficacy for physical activity behaviour change.”
Examining Physical Activity and Affect Using Objective Measures: A Pilot Study of Anorexia Nervosa.
“Mixed-effects linear models revealed temporal associations between physical activity and affect within the same day, within the same hour, and within the next hour. Momentary measurement of physical activity and positive affect revealed reciprocal effects, in that physical activity enhanced positive affect, which in turn, facilitated further activity. Findings reflect the utility of objective assessment measures in real time for the link between physical activity and affect among women with AN. “
Promotion of Adequate Exercise for Chronic Disorders’ Elderly Through Paced Music.
“In this paper, we present a mobile app for senior citizens that provides daily exercise recommendations an receive tailored service related to a chronic disorder. In this app, pace (BPM) of played music is regulated to encourage patients to fulfill their daily exercise goal.”
Physiological Sensors
Psychopathology
An ecological momentary assessment evaluation of emotion regulation abnormalities in schizophrenia
“However, it is unclear whether these abnormalities reflect poor emotion regulation effort or adequate effort, but limited effectiveness. It is also unclear whether dysfunction results primarily from one of the three stages of the emotion regulation process: identification, selection, or implementation.
The current study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to address these questions in the context of everyday activities.”
“In anorexia nervosa (AN), forgoing food intake despite emaciation and endocrine signals that promote eating is an example of “too much” self-control. Here we investigated whether voluntary emotion regulation in AN patients comes with associated disorder-relevant costs.”
“With great interest, we read the recently published review on emotion regulation in binge eating disorder (BED) by Dingemans et al. [1]. We fully agree with the authors that (a) in order to better understand binge eating, it is of major importance to delineate its affective consequences; and (b) ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is the gold standard to track these affective dynamics in patients’ everyday lives without retrospective distortions [2].”
MedAd-AppQ: A quality assessment tool for medication adherence apps on iOS and android platforms
“MedAd-AppQ can be used to reliably assess the quality of adherence apps. Clinicians can use the tool in selecting apps for use by patients. Developers of adherence apps should consider features that provide therapy-related information and help patients in medications and side-effects management.”
Evaluation of an mHealth App (DeStressify) on University Students’ Mental Health: Pilot Trial
“Current university support services are limited by factors such as available staff and finances, and social stigma has frequently been identified as an additional barrier that prevents students from accessing these resources. Mobile health (mHealth) apps are one form of alternative health support that is discrete and accessible to students, and although they are recognized as a promising alternative, there is limited research demonstrating their efficacy.”
“Childhood trauma exposure has been associated with a clinically relevant mixed phenotype of psychopathology composed of depressive, anxiety, and psychosis symptoms, across healthy and clinical samples. Altered stress-reactivity after exposure to childhood trauma may be a plausible underlying mechanism explaining this association. In a general population sample of female twins (T0 = 564; T1 = 483), associations between childhood trauma exposure and symptom profile (no symptoms, isolated symptoms, or a mixed phenotype) on the one hand, and daily life stress reactivity on the other were investigated.”
“Anhedonia has been linked to worse prognosis of depression. The present study aimed to construct personalized models to elucidate the emotional dynamics of subclinically depressed individuals with versus without symptoms of anhedonia.”
“This commentary piece discusses recent advances in the use of mobile technologies like smartphone and wearable sensors for schizophrenia research. By framing both the opportunities as well as challenges for the field, this piece aims to frame the both current and future research efforts.”
“Experience sampling, a method for real-time self-monitoring of affective experiences, holds opportunities for person-tailored treatment. By focussing on dynamic patterns of positive affect, experience sampling method interventions (ESM-I) accommodate strategies to enhance personalized treatment of depression-at potentially low-costs. This study aimed to investigate the cost-effectiveness of an experience sampling method intervention in patients with depression, from a societal perspective.”
“Findings suggest that day-to-day exposure to PTSD-related trauma cues may contribute to chronically elevated levels of anger-related affect. Such heightened affective arousal may, in turn, underlie an increased risk for verbal or physical aggression, as well as other health and quality-of-life related impairments associated with PTSD.”
“Due to a number of methodological advantages and theoretical considerations, more and more studies in clinical psychology research employ the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) as a data collection technique. Despite this growing interest, the absence of methodological guidelines related to the use of ESM has resulted in a large heterogeneity of designs while the potential effects of the design itself on the response behavior of the participants remain unknown. The objectives of this systematic review are to investigate the associations between the design characteristics and the data quality and feasibility of studies relying on ESM in severe psychiatric disorders.”
Subjective quality of life in psychosis: Evidence for an association with real world functioning?
“Subjective quality of life (SQOL) is an established patient-reported outcome in psychosis. However, current self-report measures of SQOL may be affected by recall bias and may not fully capture dynamic changes in SQOL over time. This study aimed to examine the ecological validity of self-reported and momentary assessment measures of SQOL, and their association with emotional experience, social interaction and activity in real life, in both patients with psychotic disorder (n = 56) and controls (n = 71).”
“Understanding the specific mechanisms that explain why people who have relatives with schizophrenia (i.e., people at familial high risk; FHR) are more likely to develop the disorder is crucial for prevention. We investigated a diathesis-stress model of familial risk by testing whether FHR individuals under-recruit brain regions central to emotion regulation when exposed to social conflict, resulting in worse mood and symptoms following conflict.”
“We developed a Markov model of GAD health states combined with a detailed economic analysis for a cohort of adults with GAD in the U.S. In our case study, we used pilot program efficacy data to evaluate a mobile CBT program as either prevention or treatment only and compared the strategies to traditional CBT and no CBT. Traditional CBT efficacy was estimated from clinical trial results. We calculated discounted incremental costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) over the cohort lifetime.”
“This dissertation details the process of designing and evaluating a first of a kind intervention via a weighted mobile app with the idea of trauma informed services in mind.”
“Individuals with PTSD most commonly used avoidance as an emotion regulation strategy. Multilevel modeling indicated that baseline PTSD symptoms predicted maladaptive emotion regulation strategy use. After covarying for morning PTSD symptoms, maladaptive emotion regulation prospectively predicted increased PTSD symptoms later in the day. Adaptive emotion regulation strategies did not uniquely predict later PTSD symptoms.”
“Our results indicate positive attitudes of bipolar patients towards disease management apps and assistance systems. Even new and innovative features such as partner apps or the analysis of facial expressions in video data were appreciated and daily interactions were favoured.”
Smoking Cessation
Day-to-day mastery and self-efficacy changes during a smoking quit attempt: Two studies.
“This article demonstrates that mastery experiences and self-efficacy show a reciprocal relationship within smokers during a quit attempt in a day-to-day design, as well as contagion effects in couples when both partners try to quit simultaneously.”
Exposure to workplace smoking bans and continuity of daily smoking patterns on workdays and weekends
“There was little evidence that full bans interfered with subjects’ smoking during business hours across weekdays and weekends. Smokers largely compensate for exposure to workplace smoking bans by escaping restrictions during business hours. Better understanding the effects of smoking bans on smoking behavior may help to improve their effectiveness and yield insights into determinants of smoking in more restrictive environments.”
Statistics/Methodology