GAMIFYING HEALTH DATA COLLECTION

Mariko Wakabayashi & RJ Kunde

Department of Computer ScienceUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Collaborators: Jason Cho, Tom Olson, Shravan Gupta, and Seungchul Lee

MOTIVATION

• Health data collection is dependent on a user’s motivation to participate• E.g. Health diary

• Increasing number of tools which can assist in identification, correlation and eventual care for patients and their diseases

• Growing opportunity for health professionals

APPROACH• Aim for continuous user engagement

• Gamification to maintain user’s participation, and collect health data from numerous sources • e.g. heart monitor sensor, accelerometer sensor

Prototype:

• Developed a gamified mobile application that collects physical activity and users’ health information

• Focused on two types of health data• Data from smartphone’s accelerometer sensor• Data from users’ health question answers

WHAT IS GAMIFICATION?Gamification: The application of game mechanics (e.g.

competition, rewards) to a particular task or goal in order to create motivation among participantsLocation-based Social Network:

FoursquareEducation: Khan Academy

Professional Network; LinkedIn’s Profile Completeness Circle

EXAMPLES OF GAMIFICATION IN MEDICAL LITERATURE (1)

Task 1: Educating the general public about healthy behavior

Example: OrderUP! –players learn how to make healthier meal choices

Field Study Conclusion Encouraged participants to live healthier lifestyles Participants engaged in four process of change identified by

the Trans Theoretical Model

EXAMPLES OF GAMIFICATION IN MEDICAL LITERATURE (2)

Task 2: Health diary annotation completed by particular demographics

• E.g. Pain Squad – mobile application that encourages young cancer patients to fill out pain reports.• Raised the compliance rate in annotating pain reports from

11% to over 80%.

DR.POCKET – PROTOTYPE HEALTH MOBILE APPLICATION

Goal: To accomplish Task 1 and 2 with our mobile application.

Health Diary Annotation by adults Educate about healthy behavior and

encourage a healthier lifestyle

Dr. Pocket: Asks user’s anxiety related

questions Tracks daily movement Integration of two types of health

data to understand user’s anxiety levels

DR.POCKET GAMIFICATION FRAMEWORK

Answering

Health Questio

n

Engage in

Physical Activity

Healthy Life-Style Points

DR.POCKET – HEALTH RELATED QUESTIONS

Modeled after the Institute of Medicine’s main determinants of health

Compiled surveys and scales from Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and Ian McDowell’s Measuring Health - A Guide to Rating Scales and Questionnaires

Dr. PocketFocus on anxiety • One of the most common mental illness in the US• Prevalent amongst students

Consists 102 questions from 6 different categories: stress, sleep, fatigue, anxiety, pain, and depression

HEALTH QUESTION EXAMPLES

DR.POCKET – TRACKING MOVEMENT

Tracks movement with accelerometer and gyroscope

Goal is to obtain enough data to study the integration between health questions with physical activity and train application for feedback

Game elements added to step count• Progress Wheel (Competition)• Setting goal

• Awarding Points for Participation (Rewards)

DR.POCKET – STATISTICAL FEEDBACK

Provided Information for the user:

Daily and accumulated score• Calories Burned• Step counts• Distance Traveled• Questions Answered

Game Elements encouraging Competition: Number of points obtained Tangible visuals to

understand calculated numbers

Acquired marketplace items and its duration

PILOT STUDY Hypotheses

Goal 1: Gamification in health data collection is effective Goal 2: Integration of passive and active data collection is more

effective than either approach on its own.Procedure

15 subjects used prototype application for 2 weeks Subjects description: 18-25 age group, 5 females/10 males,

studentsResults

Collected 1,380 responses and over 747,000 step counts. Participants enjoyed and vouch for gamification “The concept of earning "points" for walking more or answering

more questions is really what motivated me.” “The application showed me how much lower than the target I was

at on a daily basis so it prompted me to walk more.,”

CONCLUSION - FUTURE WORKFuture Work:Improve user interfaceExpand on current features

Increase of questions from 100 to 500 Implement adaptive questions Add network functionality to increase

competition

Conduct Larger Study 200 person, IRB sanctioned human

study Monitor user engagement, and train

application to detect anxiety levels Develop a feedback system based on

results

QUESTIONS?