New smartphone app developed at USC aims to support fitness among older adults
If the infomercials are to be believed, older adults want cellphones that are anything but smart. With oversized displays and one-touch medical alert buttons, products like the Jitterbug flip phone are simple by design.But technology usage trends among seniors are changing faster than ever. According to the Pew Research Center, 42 percent of Americans aged 65-and-older own a smartphone. As the digital gap between generations narrows, USC researchers hope to harness the potential of smartphone apps to improve the lives of older Americans.
“We’re looking at a wonderful opportunity for utilizing mobile devices to promote wellness and prevent disease,” said Stacey Schepens Niemiec, assistant professor of research at the USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.
That opportunity will soon be made a reality. Thanks to a new $468,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging, Schepens Niemiec and her team of health professionals, engineers and community partners will systematically develop and test MovingUp, a multi-feature smartphone app designed to facilitate older adults’ levels of physical activity.
(Read full article here)
“We’re looking at a wonderful opportunity for utilizing mobile devices to promote wellness and prevent disease,” said Stacey Schepens Niemiec, assistant professor of research at the USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.
That opportunity will soon be made a reality. Thanks to a new $468,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging, Schepens Niemiec and her team of health professionals, engineers and community partners will systematically develop and test MovingUp, a multi-feature smartphone app designed to facilitate older adults’ levels of physical activity.
(Read full article here)
All your health and fitness data, and one woman who mines it
Donna Spruijt-Metz, MFA, PhD, is the director of the USC mHealth Collaboratory at the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research.
Donna researches ways of using smartphones and other Internet of Things platforms to take individuals’ temporally dense, context-specific data, such as mood and eating behaviors, from individuals and devise just-in-time interventions to address obesity. Why do she and her colleagues do this, and what happened to dietary intake? For the latter, be honest. When was the last time you remembered everything you ate and the precise amounts? For the former, because mHealth technologies make this strategy possible. They can collect literally terabytes of data about your physical and emotional states, which, to Donna’s view, we should analyze and use to improve long-term health outcomes. Thus, recalling our season’s themes of preservation, resistance, healing, and transformation, applied mHealth technologies can help heal.(Read More or listen to the PODCAST)
Donna researches ways of using smartphones and other Internet of Things platforms to take individuals’ temporally dense, context-specific data, such as mood and eating behaviors, from individuals and devise just-in-time interventions to address obesity. Why do she and her colleagues do this, and what happened to dietary intake? For the latter, be honest. When was the last time you remembered everything you ate and the precise amounts? For the former, because mHealth technologies make this strategy possible. They can collect literally terabytes of data about your physical and emotional states, which, to Donna’s view, we should analyze and use to improve long-term health outcomes. Thus, recalling our season’s themes of preservation, resistance, healing, and transformation, applied mHealth technologies can help heal.(Read More or listen to the PODCAST)
Understanding human health-related behavior in real time (read full post)
his post discusses using transdisciplinary alliances to create innovative modes of data collection and new, dynamic computational models health-related behavior in real time.
By Donna Spruijt-Metz and Zan Romanoff
Real-time digital data streaming from smartphone apps offer us the opportunity for radically new understandings of human behavior – but also requires that we break away from outdated models of data collection and analysis in order to take full advantage of the richness of the information available.(read more)
By Donna Spruijt-Metz and Zan Romanoff
Real-time digital data streaming from smartphone apps offer us the opportunity for radically new understandings of human behavior – but also requires that we break away from outdated models of data collection and analysis in order to take full advantage of the richness of the information available.(read more)
 LInda Collins presenting an Introduction to MOST
Video: Inroduction to MOST
We recently released an eight-minute video that provides a conceptual overview of the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST). In the video, Methodology Center Director Linda Collins explains the phases of MOST, a framework for optimizing behavioral and biobehavioral interventions. This is the third in our series of instructional videos; video introductions to latent class analysis and time-varying effect modeling are also available. Watch the video. 
ftware: R Package for MOST
Our latest software release will assist R users who are planning studies that follow the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST). The MOST: Multiphase Optimization Strategy R package combines the functionality of the RelativeCosts1 SAS macro for charting the relative costs of reduced factorial designs; the FactorialPowerPlan SAS macro for calculating the power, effect size, or sample size of a factorial experiment; and the Random Assignment Generator for factorial experiments web applet. The software is hosted on CRAN, the Comprehensive R Archive Network, rather than on our website in order to make it available to as many R users as possible. Read more or download. |
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