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News

Research Completed

Preventing Complications with Improved Physical Activity: Can Self-Monitoring Technologies Help?

Scientific Study Title:

Preventing Complications with Improved Physical Activity: Can Self-Monitoring Technologies Help?

Start Date:

2015

End Date:

2019

Research Category

Arthritis Care, Health Habits & Wellbeing

Tags

# Arthritis Care, Health Habits & Wellbeing, Research Methods

Linda Li

Senior Scientist, Implementation Science, BSc(PT), MSc, PhD, FCAHS

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Life-changing arthritis research is only possible with your help!

Methodology

Execution of Research

We conducted a pilot study with 20 patients with RA or knee OA, of those 11 were interviewed to share their experiences after using Fitbit and FitViz for a month.

Who is involved?

Involvement

Physiotherapists and individuals who were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or osteoarthritis.

Findings & Next Steps

We developed a web application called FitViz which gathers data from patients’ Fitbit and allows their health professionals to use this data in setting personalized goals with the patient.
The use of Fitbit and FitViz appeared to increased physical activity awareness, and helped in setting realistic goals.
But, some interview participants expressed that they did not trust the Fitbit/FitViz recording of their goal achievement.
We have used these findings to refine the technology-based intervention for patients with arthritis.

Related Publications

Gupta A, Heng T, Shaw C, Li LC, Feehan LM. Designing pervasive technology for physical activity self-management in arthritis patients. Conference Proceeding. The 12th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, PervasiveHealth’18, May 2018. New York, USA.

Gupta A, Tong X, Shaw C, Li LC, Feehan L. FitViz: A personal informatics tool for self-management of rheumatoid arthritis. Conference Proceeding. In: Stephanidis C. (eds) HCI International 2017 – Posters’ Extended Abstracts. HCI 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 714. Springer, Cham. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58753-0_35. Vancouver, BC.

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