Motivation

Motivation and persuasive technology

(The text below are mainly from: Henriksen, A., Woldaregay, A.Z., Issom, D-Z., Sato, K., Årsand, E., Bradway, E., Hartvigsen, G. What motivates patients with NCDs to follow up their treatment? Accepted as workshop at MIE 2020.)

The increasing use of mobile health tools (mHealth) for self-management is considered to be important to improve health effects for patients with NCDs (Noncommuicable Chronic Diseases). This development is supported by a large number of available mHealth apps. The apps range from disease management apps (e.g., diabetes diary) to health and fitness apps (e.g., dietary apps and workout apps). However, there seems to be a lack of motivation from most users to keep using these health apps over a long period of time. This may be because of the way these apps were designed and developed, i.e. lack of co-participatory design techniques and lack of a tested developer guideline for creating mHealth solutions.

The goal is to identify motivational factors which will increase adoption and usage of mHealth apps. This activity covers three ongoing projects. In all three projects, mHealth apps have been implemented to record health data from participants. These projects are dependent on participators using the apps for an extended period of time. Motivating participants to install and use these apps are therefore an important part of each project.

The first project (Diabetes) aims to utilize patient-recorded data from people with Type 1 Diabetes and implement an Electronic Disease surveillance Monitoring Network (EDMON), which can possibly detect infectious disease outbreaks during the incubation period. This is achieved by detecting a cluster of people with elevated blood glucose (BG) levels on a spatio-temporal basis. The system incorporates data recorded from diabetes apps, Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) devices, and other appropriate physiological indicators from people with type 1 diabetes.

The second project focuses on another global health issue, Sickle-Cell Disease. This project investigates the challenges and issues regarding the automated reuse of patient-generated data to support patients’ self-care decisions. An application for collecting relevant health data is developed and the effects of reusing the information on patient outcomes such as knowledge, attitude and lifestyle practices (KAPs) will be evaluated.

The third project (Physical activity) aims to develop solutions for accessing physical activity and heart rate data from smartphones using internal and connected devices, and to examine the strengths, possibilities and potential of smartphones as data collection tools for future medical research on physical activity.

In addition, motivation is a major topic in the PA-IDe project.

Project group

Project leader:
Research scholar Andre Henriksen (UiT)
Professor Gunnar Hartvigsen (UiT) (Ass. leader)

Project members:
Research Scholar Ashenafi Zebene Woldaregay (UiT)
Research scholar Henriete Michalsen  (UNN/UiT)
Research scholar David-Zacharie Issom (UNIGE, HUG)
Research scholar Meghan Bradway (UNN/UiT)
Professor Eirik Årsand (UiT/NSE,UNN)
Professor Keiichi Sato (IIT, Chicago)
Professor Letizia Jaccheri (NTNU/UiT)
Professor Audny Anke (UNN/UiT)
Assoc. professor Gerit Pfuhl (UiT)
Assoc. professor Santiago Martinez (UiA)
Dr. Antonio Martinez Millana (UPV, Valencia, Spain)

MSc students:

Publications (selected)

1. Woldaregay, A.Z., Issom, D.-Z., Henriksen, A., Marttila, H., Mikalsen, M., Pfuhl, G., Sato, K., Lovis, C., Hartvigsen, G. Motivational Factors for User Engagement with mHealth Apps. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 2018;249:151–157. PMID: 29866972
2. Henriksen, A., Hartvigsen, G., Hopstock, L.A., Grimsgaard, S. Using mobile sensors to expand recording of physical activity and increase motivation for prolonged data sharing in a population-based study. I: Martinez, S., Budrionis, A., Bygholm, A., Fossum, M., Hartvigsen, G., Hägglund, M., Moe, C.E., Thygesen, E., Vimarlund, V., Yigzaw, K.Y. (Red.). Proceedings from the 15^th Scandinavian Conference on Health Informatics 2017. Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings, No. 145. Linköping, Sweden: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2017, pp. 28-34. (ISSN: 1650-3686 (print) ISSN: 1650-3740 (online) ISBN: 978-91-7685-364-1)
3. Makhlysheva, A., Årsand, E., Hartvigsen, G. Review of Serious Games for People with Diabetes. Book chapter in: Novak, D., Tulu, B., Brendryen, H. (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Holistic Perspectives in Gamification for Clinical Practice. 412–447). Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2016. (DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-9522-1.ch019) (ISBN13: 9781466695221)
4. Rønningen, I.C., Årsand, E., Hartvigsen, G. Exploring In-Game Reward Mechanisms in Diaquarium – A Serious Game for Children with Type 1 Diabetes. Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI) (Subseries of Lecture Notes in Computer Science). 2018, Vol. 10814, pp. 443-455. (ISSN 0302-9743)
5. Woldaregay, A.Z., Henriksen, A., Issom, D.Z., Pfuhl, G., Sato, K., Richard, A., Lovis, C., Årsand, E., Rochat, J., Hartvigsen, G. User Expectations and Willingness to Share Self-collected Health Data. Accepted as full paper at MIE 2020.(To be published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics)
6. Henriksen, A., Woldaregay, A.Z., Issom, D-Z., Sato, K., Årsand, E., Bradway, E., Hartvigsen, G. What motivates patients with NCDs to follow up their treatment? Accepted as workshop at MIE 2020.
7. Berg, V., Haugland, V., Wiik, M.F., Michalsen, H., Anke, A., Muzny, M., Gomez, J., Martinez, S.G., Martinez-Millana, A., Henriksen, A., Sato, K., Hartvigsen, G. eHealth Approach for Motivating Physical Activities of People with Intellectual Disabilities. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Vol 573 (2020), pp. 31-41.
8. Michalsen, H., Wangberg, S.C., Anke, A., Hartvigsen, G., Jaccheri, , Arntzen, C. Family members and health care workers’ perspectives on motivational factors of participation in physical activity for people with intellectual disability: A qualitative study. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 2020, p. 12716 (First published: 24.01.2020) https://doi.org/10.1111/jir.12716
9. Vidal, J.C.T., Wold, I., Jaccheri, L., Pelagatti, S., Chessa, S., Gomez, J., Hartvigsen, G., Mikalsen, H. Developing Software for Motivating Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities to do Outdoor Physical Activity. Accepted as short paper by ICSE 2020.
10. Issom, D-Z., Henriksen, I., Woldaregay, A.Z., Rochat, J., Lovis, C., Hartvigsen, G. Factors Influencing Motivation and Engagement in mHealth Amongst People with Sickle-Cell Disease in Low-Prevalence, High-Income Countries: Qualitative Exploration of Patient Requirements. Accepted by JMIR Human Factors.