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Electronics
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eHealth and mHealth: Challenges and New Strategies in Information Exchange
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eHealth and mHealth: Challenges and New Strategies in Information Exchange

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Microwave and Wireless Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2021) | Viewed by 23632

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. José García Moros

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, University of Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
Interests: e-Health; encoding; management; quality of service; security; telecommunications; transmission.

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue to promote a discussion of eHealth and mHealth Applications in the Electronics Journal.

The Special Issue will publish innovative, timely, and high-impact original research papers and reviews on any aspect of communication technology innovations applied to eHealth and mHealth services. eHealth and mHealth solutions can improve the quality of health services by increasing shared decision-making and improving self-management by empowering patients and, therefore, may help to alleviate the burden on current traditional health services.

We encourage the submission of relevant manuscripts across the broad spectrum of communication technologies, with the following cross-cutting topics being of particular interest: health information management including acquisition, transmission, processing, data mining techniques, and storage; biomedical information exchange standards; privacy and security of the information and services; web-based, mobile and social media tools and applications.

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions that will provide researchers with up-to-date insights into communication technology innovations applied to e-health services from around the world.

Prof. Dr. José García Moros
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • applications
  • eHealth
  • mHealth
  • information management
  • privacy and security
  • standards

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

Jump to: Review, Other

19 pages, 1206 KiB  
Article
Health Promotion through Monetary Incentives: Evaluating the Impact of Different Reinforcement Schedules on Engagement Levels with a mHealth App
by Raoul Nuijten, Pieter Van Gorp, Alireza Khanshan, Pascale Le Blanc, Astrid Kemperman, Pauline van den Berg and Monique Simons
Electronics 2021, 10(23), 2935; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10232935 - 26 Nov 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2181
Abstract
Background: Financial rewards can be employed in mHealth apps to effectively promote health behaviors. However, the optimal reinforcement schedule—with a high impact, but relatively low costs—remains unclear. Methods: We evaluated the impact of different reinforcement schedules on engagement levels with a mHealth app [...] Read more.
Background: Financial rewards can be employed in mHealth apps to effectively promote health behaviors. However, the optimal reinforcement schedule—with a high impact, but relatively low costs—remains unclear. Methods: We evaluated the impact of different reinforcement schedules on engagement levels with a mHealth app in a six-week, three-arm randomized intervention trial, while taking into account personality differences. Participants (i.e., university staff and students, N = 61) were awarded virtual points for performing health-related activities. Their performance was displayed via a dashboard, leaderboard, and newsfeed. Additionally, participants could win financial rewards. These rewards were distributed using a fixed schedule in the first study arm, and a variable schedule in the other arms. Furthermore, payouts were immediate in the first two arms, whereas payouts in the third arm were delayed. Results: All three reinforcement schedules had a similar impact on user engagement, although the variable schedule with immediate payouts was reported to have the lowest cost per participant. Additionally, the impact of financial rewards was affected by personal characteristics. Especially, individuals that were triggered by the rewards had a greater ability to defer gratification. Conclusion: When employing financial rewards in mHealth apps, variable reinforcement schedules with immediate payouts are preferred from the perspective of cost and impact. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue eHealth and mHealth: Challenges and New Strategies in Information Exchange)
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26 pages, 3137 KiB  
Article
Building Standardized and Secure Mobile Health Services Based on Social Media
by Jesús D. Trigo, Óscar J. Rubio, Miguel Martínez-Espronceda, Álvaro Alesanco, José García and Luis Serrano-Arriezu
Electronics 2020, 9(12), 2208; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9122208 - 21 Dec 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2901
Abstract
Mobile devices and social media have been used to create empowering healthcare services. However, privacy and security concerns remain. Furthermore, the integration of interoperability biomedical standards is a strategic feature. Thus, the objective of this paper is to build enhanced healthcare services by [...] Read more.
Mobile devices and social media have been used to create empowering healthcare services. However, privacy and security concerns remain. Furthermore, the integration of interoperability biomedical standards is a strategic feature. Thus, the objective of this paper is to build enhanced healthcare services by merging all these components. Methodologically, the current mobile health telemonitoring architectures and their limitations are described, leading to the identification of new potentialities for a novel architecture. As a result, a standardized, secure/private, social-media-based mobile health architecture has been proposed and discussed. Additionally, a technical proof-of-concept (two Android applications) has been developed by selecting a social media (Twitter), a security envelope (open Pretty Good Privacy (openPGP)), a standard (Health Level 7 (HL7)) and an information-embedding algorithm (modifying the transparency channel, with two versions). The tests performed included a small-scale and a boundary scenario. For the former, two sizes of images were tested; for the latter, the two versions of the embedding algorithm were tested. The results show that the system is fast enough (less than 1 s) for most mHealth telemonitoring services. The architecture provides users with friendly (images shared via social media), straightforward (fast and inexpensive), secure/private and interoperable mHealth services. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue eHealth and mHealth: Challenges and New Strategies in Information Exchange)
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18 pages, 3581 KiB  
Article
Electromyography Pattern Likelihood Analysis for Flexion-Relaxation Phenomenon Evaluation
by Michele Paoletti, Alberto Belli, Lorenzo Palma and Paola Pierleoni
Electronics 2020, 9(12), 2046; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9122046 - 2 Dec 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3297
Abstract
The myoelectric activity of the back muscles can be studied to evaluate the flexion-relaxation phenomenon and find differences between electromyography patterns on different subjects. In this paper, we propose an algorithm able to provide a myoelectric silence evaluation based on the data acquired [...] Read more.
The myoelectric activity of the back muscles can be studied to evaluate the flexion-relaxation phenomenon and find differences between electromyography patterns on different subjects. In this paper, we propose an algorithm able to provide a myoelectric silence evaluation based on the data acquired from a wireless body sensor network consisting of surface electromyography sensors in association with a wearable inertial measurement unit. From the study group was chosen a gold standard subject, a healthy control with the best regular patterns, as a reference to find a first validity range. Through the subsequent iterations, the range was modified to include the other healthy subjects who showed muscle relaxation according to the previous ranges. Through this likelihood analysis, we want to compare patterns on different channels, identified by the electromyography root mean squared values, to study and find with iterations a validity range for the myoelectric activity silence identification and classification. The proposed algorithm was tested by processing the data collected in an acquisition campaign conducted to evaluate the flexion-relaxation phenomenon on the back muscles of subjects with and without lower back pain. The results show that the submitted method is significant for the clinical assessment of electromyography activity patterns to evaluate which are the subjects that have patterns near or far from the gold standard. This analysis is useful both for prevention and for assessing the progress of subjects with low back pain undergoing physiotherapy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue eHealth and mHealth: Challenges and New Strategies in Information Exchange)
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Review

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24 pages, 682 KiB  
Review
Mobile Applications for Assessing Human Posture: A Systematic Literature Review
by Rayele Moreira, Ariel Teles, Renan Fialho, Rodrigo Baluz, Thalyta Cibele Santos, Rômulo Goulart-Filho, Laiane Rocha, Francisco José Silva, Nishu Gupta, Victor Hugo Bastos and Silmar Teixeira
Electronics 2020, 9(8), 1196; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9081196 - 25 Jul 2020
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 9512
Abstract
Smartphones are increasingly incorporated with features such as sensors and high resolution cameras that empower their capabilities, enabling their use for varied activities including human posture assessments. Previous reviews have discussed methods used in postural assessment but none of them focused exclusively on [...] Read more.
Smartphones are increasingly incorporated with features such as sensors and high resolution cameras that empower their capabilities, enabling their use for varied activities including human posture assessments. Previous reviews have discussed methods used in postural assessment but none of them focused exclusively on mobile applications. This paper systematically reviews mobile applications proposed for analyzing human posture based on alignment of the body in the sagittal and coronal plane. The main digital libraries were searched, 26 articles published between 2010 and 2020 were selected, and 13 mobile applications were identified, classified and discussed. Results showed that the use of mobile applications to assist with posture assessment have been demonstrated to be reliable, and this can contribute to clinical practice of health professionals, especially the assessment and reassessment phases of treatments, despite some variations when compared to traditional methods. Moreover, in the case of image-based applications, we highlight the advantage that measurements can be taken with the assessor at a certain distance with respect to the patient’s position, which is an important function for assessments performed in pandemic times such as the outbreak of COVID-19. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue eHealth and mHealth: Challenges and New Strategies in Information Exchange)
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Other

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17 pages, 4710 KiB  
Systematic Review
Could Avatar Therapy Enhance Mental Health in Chronic Patients? A Systematic Review
by Marta Franco, Carlos Monfort, Antonio Piñas-Mesa and Esther Rincon
Electronics 2021, 10(18), 2212; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10182212 - 9 Sep 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4367
Abstract
The use of avatars in the psychological treatment of some chronic diseases is in their infancy, and it represents a growing field of research with many possibilities for innovation. However, there is a lack of studies seeking to determine if avatar-based therapies could [...] Read more.
The use of avatars in the psychological treatment of some chronic diseases is in their infancy, and it represents a growing field of research with many possibilities for innovation. However, there is a lack of studies seeking to determine if avatar-based therapies could improve mental health in chronic care settings. In fact, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review addressing this research topic. The objectives of this study were to review the scientific literature on those studies involving avatar-based therapies for chronic patients, as well as different ways to develop them and their efficacy on mental health outcomes. Two main questions were addressed: (1) Are avatar-based strategies useful to improve mental health in chronic patients? (2) Which is the best way to develop avatar-based strategies regarding chronic diseases? A systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature was conducted in March 2021. The results were, not only useful for establishing suitable ways to develop avatar-based strategies to improve mental health in chronic care, but also for providing an ad hoc taxonomy regarding this research topic. Five modalities were established according to technological complexity and avatar presentation. Most of the studies were effective (61.1%) in enhancing mental health in chronic care. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue eHealth and mHealth: Challenges and New Strategies in Information Exchange)
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