JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

This protocol describes the setup of the Health Telescope: a longitudinal panel study that tracks participant activity and recommends eHealth apps to increase this activity. By setting up the Health Telescope, we aim to (1) understand more about the long-term use of eHealth applications, (2) measure relationships between short term and long term outcomes to investigate their relation, and (3) test different ways of personalizing eHealth application offerings.

Objective:

The objectives of this paper are to (1) demonstrate and motivate the validity of the choices we made while setting up the Health Telescope, (2) provide a resource for researchers interested in using Health Telescope data; and (3) act as a guideline for researchers interested in setting up their own longitudinal data collection using wearable devices.

Methods:

We will set up a panel consisting of 1.000 Dutch adults. Participant's physical activity, phone usage, and their mood will be assessed. A machine learning model will be used to generate personalized eHealth recommendations: our setup uniquely enables us to estimate the long term effects of these personalized eHealth offerings.

Results:

The data collection software has been developed and all the legal and ethical checks are in place. Recruitment is scheduled to start in Q4 of 2019. Initial results will be published Q1 of 2020.

Conclusions:

The aim of the Health Telescope is to investigate how different individuals respond to different ways of being encouraged to increase their physical activity. In this paper we detail the setup, methods, and analysis plan that enable us to reach this aim.