Developing Interactive Technologies to Improve Research and Health Behavior

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Developing interactive technologies to improve research and health behavior. Context: High rates of unhealthy behaviors underlie many of the chronic conditions that burden Americans. Interventions derived from theories of behavioral economics have shown promise in increasing the rate of healthy behaviors, but these interventions typically require frequent (often daily) contact. An information technology (IT) platform can facilitate participant tracking, monitoring using home-based devices, feedback, and automated payment systems, but creating such a platform would be too expensive for any one study. Objective: The primary objectives of this project are to design, build, test, and refine an IT platform that will: 1) provide investigators an easily customized web-based platform to evaluate behavioral interventions to promote health, including the use of financial incentives, frequent feedback, visual approaches to information, and social networks; 2) provide older Americans, other members of the general public, and public and private sector organizations with a web portal which can facilitate participation in innovative research on behavioral approaches to improve health behavior at low incremental cost. Design and Methods: The platform will be developed and tested over two years by a team composed of faculty and staff from the University of Pennsylvania (School of Medicine, the Wharton School, Wharton Computing, and the Biomedical Informatics Consortium), as well as local web developers. The platform will consist of a client layer, an application layer, a database layer, and supporting hardware which are fully integrated and have the built-in flexibility to connect with existing and new technologies in the areas of home health monitoring, online social networking, text messaging to cell phones, and devices with specialized health promotion applications such as iPhones. The platform will also integrate with financial service and payment vendors, including PayPal, MasterCard, and VISA. In the second year, a portfolio of pilot projects will be fielded to test each of the functionalities of the system and their feasibility, particularly in older adults. Impact: Despite the theoretical promise of behavioral economic approaches to improve health behaviors, implementation is often costly because of the need for frequent contact and reinforcement. Those costs hamper both research investigating these approaches and the deployment of approaches found by existing research to be effective. The proposed IT infrastructure will provide a state-of-the-art platform on which to build, test, and deploy large-scale behavioral intervention studies and advance the science at the intersection of behavioral economics and health. In addition, this project will contribute significantly to the creation of high tech jobs in the Philadelphia region. The current proposal will create or retain twenty jobs in the near term. In the long-term, the existence of the platform will enable innumerable additional research projects and accelerate the pace of scientific advances leading to additional high tech high wage jobs and improved health. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed IT infrastructure will provide a state-of-the-art platform on which to build, test, and deploy large- scale behavioral intervention studies and advance the science at the intersection of behavioral economics and health. We will provide linkages between this portal and a variety of home-based and hand-held health measurement devices, facilitating interventional studies to improve management of chronic disease among older adults. In addition, this project will contribute significantly to the creation of future-looking high technology jobs in the Philadelphia region.