Promoting a healthier life-style using activity-aware smart phones

Today´s healthcare delivery system faces numerous problems, such as grey-population and life-style diseases. One such life-style disease is obesity, which has seen a rapid increase over the past decade. It can now be regarded as a global epidemic that can further lead to chronic diseases, such as diabetes, stroke, high blood cholesterol, hypertension and cardiac failure. Nowadays, most people have high caloric intake due to easy access to foods and beverages with high caloric content and extremely low levels of physical activity relative to that caloric intake. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of our study where an accelerometer enabled smart phone was used to recognize a person´s daily physical activities using activity acceleration signals. These activity aware phones were then used to suggest minor behavior modifications to a person´s daily routine, such as a short walk after a long period of sitting, and walking back to lab from cafeteria. It is shown that by using this intelligent system to incorporate small modifications in their daily routine, people can boost their overall energy expenditure and thus can achieve a protective effect against lifestyle diseases like obesity.