Improving Preventive Healthcare with an User-centric Mobile Tele-monitoring Model

Chronic diseases are an important field to tackle due to increasing healthcare risk factors, including population nutritional habits, lack of physical exercise, and population aging. Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and obesity currently affect millions of people, and this statistic grows every year and is responsible for numerous deaths everyday. Many of those deaths could be delayed by following a steady monitoring strategy over such a population, which would prevent vital signs from reaching critical stages and providing knowledge for these patients about their health. This paper introduces Mobilicare, a mobile health promotion system designed to: (i) monitor remotely a patient's vital signs in real time; (ii) support a health service in a Healthcare Center; and (iii) allow self-awareness of the disease and improve motivation. Our approach was applied to two distinct chronic patient management programs. The results showed the commitment of elder patients and the contribution of Mobilicare to the maintenance of a patient's health stability.