PathMate2: The Impact of Health Information System Services on the Effects of Therapy in Overweight Teenagers

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Maaß
• Subject Area: Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273255463

In Switzerland, 20% of children are overweight and novel methods are urgently needed to control the epidemic. Multi-professional programs combining physical activity, nutritional and behavioral components have positive effects on therapy outcomes and co-morbidities, but these interventions induce high costs and are time-consuming for health providers, patients and families, in particular those living in rural regions. Health information systems (HIS) have not only the potential to improve outcomes of obesity therapy but also to reduce health costs and increase access to health care in remote regions. Most HIS have indeed not been evaluated in this regard. In the PathMate project (SNF grant #135552), a mobile HIS has been developed for teenagers to support therapy and to prevent obesity in accordance with state-of-the-art multi-professional programs and, in contrast to commercially available IT applications, with a high standard of data protection and safety. The IS effects of this HIS have been successfully evaluated in first longitudinal studies. The overall goal of PathMate2 is to assess the impact of HIS services on the degree of obesity measured by the body mass index (BMI) incl. other health outcomes. Individual and shared understanding between patients and therapists are assessed as mediating factors. Specific goals are: (1) to assess the effects of a child-friendly IT-mediated low-threshold intervention under the supervision of primary care providers and obesity experts (2) to automatically capture and process obesity-related biosignals by smart sensors and use results for immediate feedback for the patients and medical providers based on permissions and communication patterns and (3) to design evidence-based self-regulation interventions for teenager in their everyday life by coupling Neuro Information Systems services with Smart Health Sensors (SHS).HIS services are collaboratively developed by design-science research and evaluated by medical experts, patients, IS researcher and computer scientists. First, HIS services from PathMate are enhanced with SHS enabling real-time data analytics on mobile devices and results can be seen by both therapists and patients. Second, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) is conducted by a physician in a specialized pediatric obesity center in St. Gall with the goal to evaluate the effects of the re-designed and improved HIS services on adherence to therapy of the patient and his parents as well as on BMI and other health outcomes; a second RCT is conducted in parallel to assess the effects of these services in a community setting in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.Building on the results of the PathMate project it is expected that the improved HIS services that are going to be designed and evaluated in PathMate2 have the potential for a significant impact on individual health and the quality of healthcare systems in general.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Dagmar L Allemand-Jander
• Cooperation Partners: Privatdozentin Nathalie Farpour-Lambert; Professor Dr. Elgar Fleisch