Enabling At-Home Health Interventions with Personal Health Technologies

Abstract

While the growing ubiquity of personal health technologies holds promise for supporting healthier lifestyles, many of these technologies currently focus on data collection, with limited support for translating that data into meaningful action. In this dissertation, I will illustrate how designing these technologies for the challenges of at-home, longitudinal use can enable novel health interventions. First, I will introduce Beacon, a system for self-measurement of cognitive function, and how it can be used to support patients in adjusting their medication dosage. Then, I will demonstrate how ExerciseRx, an interactive movement feedback system, promotes exercise in patients and enables them to monitor their progression in movement quality. Finally, I will show how PARX builds upon ExerciseRx and closes the gap between patients and healthcare providers by enabling providers to generate and tailor exercise plans to individual needs. I will conclude by discussing on-going work in translating each of these projects into the real world as well as overarching lessons learned from developing and deploying personal home health technologies.