scholarly journals mHealth Apps as Effective Persuasive Health Technology: Contextualizing the “Necessary” Functionalities

JMIR Nursing ◽  
10.2196/19302 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. e19302
Author(s):  
Allen McLean

Persuasive health technology (PHT) is any technology purposely designed to influence, reinforce, change, or shape health-related attitudes or behaviors. Behavioral interventions can be developed for the purpose of maintaining or improving a person’s health status. Delivering behavioral interventions via PHTs is a promising approach for encouraging healthy behaviors among individuals and populations. Important attributes of all PHTs include their functionalities. A functionality refers to any useful features, functions, capabilities, or technologies associated with computer hardware or software. Creating effective PHTs requires a deliberate selection of appropriate functionalities for supporting specific behavioral interventions. The number and types of functionalities necessary to create an effective PHT will be specific to the context of each project, influenced by project objectives, stakeholder goals, behavioral interventions, and a variety of real-world constraints. Selecting appropriate functionalities can be challenging. Fortunately, there are frameworks and models developed specifically for guiding the design of PHTs. The Persuasive Systems Design model describes 4 categories, and 28 design principles for creating effective persuasive interventions. These same design principles could also be useful for guiding the selection of appropriate functionalities.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen McLean

UNSTRUCTURED Persuasive health technology (PHT) is any technology purposely designed to influence, reinforce, change, or shape health-related attitudes or behaviors. Behavioral interventions can be developed for the purpose of maintaining or improving a person’s health status. Delivering behavioral interventions via PHTs is a promising approach for encouraging healthy behaviors among individuals and populations. Important attributes of all PHTs include their functionalities. A functionality refers to any useful features, functions, capabilities, or technologies associated with computer hardware or software. Creating effective PHTs requires a deliberate selection of appropriate functionalities for supporting specific behavioral interventions. The number and types of functionalities necessary to create an effective PHT will be specific to the context of each project, influenced by project objectives, stakeholder goals, behavioral interventions, and a variety of real-world constraints. Selecting appropriate functionalities can be challenging. Fortunately, there are frameworks and models developed specifically for guiding the design of PHTs. The Persuasive Systems Design model describes 4 categories, and 28 design principles for creating effective persuasive interventions. These same design principles could also be useful for guiding the selection of appropriate functionalities.


Different e-commerce applications aim to utilize different techniques and methods to enhance their usability and persuasive design experience. Persuasive design persuades users to use an application. Users also review the applications they use and provide comments based on their experiences. Therefore, this study aims to examine that to what extent the principles of the persuasive systems design (PSD) model have been implemented in a number of e-commerce applications in Saudi Arabia based on user reviews. Users’ reviews have been extracted using Appbot tool. Filtering and categorizing the collected users’ reviews took place before analyzing the data. The filtering and categorization were based on PSD model. The results demonstrate which principles of the PSD model are highly used in the selected applications based on users’ reviews. Tailoring, tunneling, and reductions principles have been reported to be positively utilized and implemented by the selected applications. Moreover, the findings report different users’ reviews on rewards and social supports principles.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. S731
Author(s):  
N. Afroz ◽  
J. Marvel ◽  
C. Naujoks ◽  
D. Ossa ◽  
F. Patalano

2021 ◽  
pp. 1358863X2110429
Author(s):  
Samuel Z Goldhaber ◽  
Elizabeth A Magnuson ◽  
Khaja M Chinnakondepalli ◽  
David J Cohen ◽  
Suresh Vedantham

Catheter-directed thrombolysis (CDT) has been utilized as an adjunct to anticoagulant therapy in selected patients with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) for approximately 30 years. CDT used to be limited to patients with DVT causing acute limb threat and those exhibiting failure of initial anticoagulation, but has expanded over time. Randomized trials evaluating the first-line use of CDT for proximal DVT have demonstrated that CDT does not produce a major reduction in the occurrence of post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS) and that it is poorly suited for elderly patients and those with limited thrombus extent or major risk factors for bleeding. However, CDT does offer selected patients with acute iliofemoral DVT improvement in reducing early DVT symptoms, in achieving reduction in PTS severity, and in producing an improvement in health-related quality of life (QOL). Clinical practice guidelines from medical and surgical societies are now largely aligned with the randomized trial results. This review offers the reader an update on the results of recently completed clinical trials, and additional guidance on appropriate selection of patients with DVT for catheter-directed thrombolytic therapy.


Author(s):  
Sagar Chowdhury ◽  
Zahed Siddique

With the advancements of 3D modeling software, the use of CAD in design has become a standard practice. In recent years development in computer hardware and improvements in user friendliness of the CAD software has allowed designers to quickly and easily modify the CAD models. This modification capability allows CAD to be an integral part of the design process. Due to the increase in global competition, companies have become increasingly interested in fast and efficient design processes. One way to achieve improved efficiency is through better collaboration among designers working in common or similar projects and disciplines. A large design problem often requires specialized knowledge from several fields. Collaboration among the designers from these fields will ensure efficient design. Interaction among the designers can prevent redesign of similar components/subsystems, which requires the ability to share their designs. With the increase of collaboration, designers can now get access to large databases of 3D CAD models. But the challenge lies in search capabilities to identify common models from a large database. These considerations suggest that in the near future a challenge in 3D CAD industry will be how to find models of similar components and products. This paper presents an approach and its implementation to measure the similarity among a number of CAD models. The approach is based on the extraction and organization of information from the CAD models, which is followed by the suitable selection of commonality index and calculation of the commonality among a set of CAD models. A set of Vacuum cleaners are modeled and then compared to demonstrate the application of the approach.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Tan ◽  
Sandy Campbell

Books have long been recognized  resources for health literacy and healing (Fosson & Husband, 1984). Individuals with health conditions or disabilities or who are dealing with illness, disability or death among friends or loved ones, can find solace and affirmation in fictional works that depict characters coping with similar health conditions. This study asked the question “If we were to select a new collection of children’s health-related fiction in mid-2014, which books would we select and what selection criteria would we apply?”  The results of this study are a set of criteria for the selection of  current English language literary works with health-related content for the pre-kindergarten to Grade 6 (age 12) audience http://hdl.handle.net/10402/era.38842, a collection of books that are readily available to Canadian libraries - selected against these criteria http://hdl.handle.net/10402/era.38843, a special issue of the Deakin Review of Children’s Literature -  dedicated to juvenile health fiction, and book exhibits in two libraries to accompany the Deakin Review issue.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-344
Author(s):  
Sung Woo Kim ◽  
Marcos E. Duarte

In the modern pig production, pigs are weaned at early age with immature intestine. Dietary and environmental factors challenge the intestine, specifically the jejunum, causing inflammation and oxidative stress followed by destruction of epithelial barrier and villus structures in the jejunum. Crypt cell proliferation increases to repair damages in the jejunum. Challenges to maintain the intestinal health have been shown to be related to changes in the profile of mucosa-associated microbiota in the jejunum of nursery pigs. All these processes can be quantified as biomarkers to determine status of intestinal health related to growth potential of nursery pigs. Nursery pigs with impaired intestinal health show reduced ability of nutrient digestion and thus reduced growth. A tremendous amount of research effort has been made to determine nutritional strategies to maintain or improve intestinal health and microbiota in nursery pigs. A large number of feed additives have been evaluated for their effectiveness on improving intestinal health and balancing intestinal microbiota in nursery pigs. Selected prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and other bioactive compounds can be used in feeds to handle issues with intestinal health. Selection of these feed additives should aim modulating biomarkers indicating intestinal health. This review aims to define intestinal health and introduce examples of nutritional approaches to handle intestinal health in nursery pigs.


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