A customizable mobile tool for supporting health behavior interventions

Recorded self-observations on a regular basis is an important component in many health behavior interventions. Using information and communication technologies (ICT) and especially mobile eHealth applications is a promising way of improving user-friendliness and possibly the overall effectiveness of self-monitoring. Mobility as such brings the added value of continuous availability and timely information access. One additional benefit of ICT based solutions is the possibility for various types of customization, allowing support for a wider set of application requirements than was originally planned, and meeting changing needs and targets of individuals, groups or larger user segments. In this paper, we present a customizable mobile application for recording and managing health related self-observations, Wellness Diary, and the ideas and technical solutions for supporting tailoring of the application. The main idea is to allow end-users to freely change the data model in the application, and customize related data presentations. This work has been done in Nuadu ITEA project, as well as further work where the effectiveness of the mobile tool and other ICT technologies will be investigated in a controlled trial in Finland. We´ll also present shortly a counterpart for the mobile application, a web service that should bring some added value for the end user.