Development of a Smart Health Care Service Using Metaverse and Chatbot Technologies for Adolescents, Parents, and...

Adolescent health issues, particularly obesity, have become increasingly serious, highlighting the need for health management strategies tailored to the unique life cycle characteristics of adolescents.

This study aimed to develop a smart health care service for adolescents, their parents, and school health teachers to enhance their health.

The service leverages a mobile app, a web platform, wearable devices, the metaverse, and chatbots. The development process included a needs assessment, core user interface (UI) design, and service model creation. The needs assessment involved a literature review of 65 studies, a web survey of 96 participants, and 30 interviews. A usability evaluation of the core UI, shaped by the insights from the needs assessment, was conducted with 76 participants.

The service was conceptualized emphasizing school settings to cater to school-aged users, ensuring that the design is closely aligned with user needs. In addition, it incorporates features to deliver personalized services based on individual health information and uses gamification elements to enhance user engagement. The core UI was developed in response to the needs assessment findings, supported by a user flowchart. Furthermore, we created a use case diagram illustrating the interaction between various users and the services, a flowchart outlining the service algorithm, and a lifelog data collection system. The core UI usability evaluation results revealed that both students and parents considered sleep management important, while school health teachers deemed the measurement of physical activity essential. Students and parents prioritized physical activity measurement, and students particularly favored rewards for activities as the most promising solutions for health management challenges. The outcomes of the core UI usability evaluation indicated that school health teachers rated effectiveness (mean 4.26, SD 0.41), usefulness (mean 4.18, SD 0.54), usability (mean 4.29, SD 0.55), and user control (mean 4.08, SD 0.60) highly, reflecting the highest expectations across all categories.

This study demonstrated that a school-based smart health care service can effectively support adolescent health management by integrating personalized health data, gamification, and interactive tools. The usability evaluation revealed that students and parents prioritized sleep and physical activity tracking, while school health teachers emphasized the importance of monitoring physical activity. In addition, reward-based engagement strategies were identified as a promising approach to improve adolescent health behaviors. These findings suggest that leveraging digital health solutions tailored to adolescents' needs can contribute to establishing sustainable health habits from an early age.