BALANCE: Towards a Usable Pervasive Wellness Application with Accurate Activity Inference.

Area of Science:

• Health technology
• Behavioral science
• Mobile sensing

Background:

• Objective monitoring of eating and activity behaviors is crucial for promoting healthier lifestyles.
• Existing wellness management tools often lack objective data and long-term tracking capabilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and validate the BALANCE system, a mobile phone-based platform for long-term wellness management.
• To assess the accuracy of the system in estimating caloric expenditure.

Main Methods:

• The BALANCE system utilizes a Mobile Sensing Platform for automatic caloric expenditure detection via hip-worn sensors.
• Users manually input dietary information through an N95 mobile phone interface.
• Validation involved measuring oxygen consumption during treadmill walking and jogging.

Main Results:

• The system's caloric output estimation demonstrated an accuracy within 87% of the actual value during initial validation experiments.
• The system successfully integrated sensor data and manual user input for comprehensive wellness monitoring.

Conclusions:

• The BALANCE system shows promise as a tool for objective, long-term wellness management.
• Further refinement and evaluation are needed to enhance data input methods and activity inference for improved efficacy.