JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Self-tracking technologies are widely used in people’s daily lives and healthcare. Academic research on self-tracking and quantified self has also accumulated rapidly in recent years. Surprisingly, there is a paucity of research that reviews, classifies, and synthesizes the state of the art with respect to self-tracking and quantified self.

Objective:

Our objective was to identify the state of the art in self-tracking and quantified self in health and well-being.

Methods:

We have undertaken a systematic literature review on self-tracking and quantified self in promoting health and well-being. We reviewed altogether 81 empirical research papers.

Results:

Our results show that prior research has focused on three perspectives with respect to self-tracking and quantified self, namely individual user, healthcare professional, and market. We further describe the research themes under each of the three perspectives. Moreover, we classified the future research suggestions given in the literature into five directions: 1) employment of longitudinal research designs, 2) users’ modalities in the use of self-tracking technologies, 3) issues related to data sharing, 4) psychological and behavioral aspects of self-tracking, and 5) self-tracking in clinical use. We further described the specific research areas for each research direction.

Conclusions:

This systematic literature review contributes to research and practice by assisting future research activities and providing practitioners with a concise view of the state of the art in self-tracking research.