Date of Award

Spring 2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computing

First Advisor

Ahamed, Sheikh I.

Second Advisor

Franco, Zeno

Third Advisor

Tamma, Chandana P.

Abstract

Use of mobile health (mHealth) technology for behavioral and psychological studies through continuous assessment and intervention is found to be effective. Also, the use of smartphone has increased rapidly last few years, as well as its uses for health support. mHealth research is applied for smoking cessation, motivating cancer survivors and mentoring peers for social engagement. While in most settings researchers are developing their own intervention and assessment tool for each different research. In this study mHealth research is applied and generalized across a range of applications, including smoking cessation, motivating cancer survivors and mentoring peers to improve social engagement. Here at Ubicomp Lab, Marquette University we have developed similar tool – Mobile peer-mentoring: An approach to making veterans seek mental health care support a normality, and Walking Forward for Physical Activity: The mHealth Tool for Motivating Cancer Survivors. This study analyzed these research, and proposed a design and implemented it as a generic mHealth tool, named mCAT (Mobile Continuous Assessment Tool). We also have shown the complexity to design challenges to develop an effective smartphone application that meets user expectation. The goal of this generic mHealth tool is to help future research designed for continuous assessment and intervention. This tool provides the initial building block as modules, customizable features, and API to start with the actual implementation. mCAT expects to be cost effective, easily customizable, leverage learning curve on the open standard.

Download
COinS