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My principal interest in mobile applications is to push the boundaries of innovation to create uniquely mobile experiences. I hope my blogs excite and challenge developers to think 'outside the box'.

NFC is good for you

coultonp | 20 November, 2007 15:33

As I have just had the paper Using NFC to Support and Encourage Green Exercise accepted for next year’s Pervasive Heath conference in Tampere Finland I thought I would give an insight into the project.

It is well accepted that the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of the British population is helping fuel the dramatic rises in type 2 diabetes, chronic heart disease and obesity. It has been widely reported across the various News media that recent estimates suggest that over 40% of school age children are overweight or obese, and by 2010 more than half of children may be obese. In addition to this, depression and mental ill health is set to be one of the fastest growing conditions in UK with 1 in 6 of the population suffering from a neurotic disorder. Whilst the overall reasons for this are complex there are simple things we can all do to improve this situation.  For instance a report by the UK CMO concluded that:

“The minimum amount of regular physical activity needed to improve peoples’ health and reduce disease risk is 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on at least 5 days a week.” 

An important element of encouraging activity is the need to provide feedback as it is known to aid both the level and continued engagement in activity. In this project we created a system, which combines elements from a number of technologies and services to support and encourage walking as part of daily activity. These are; Mobile phones; Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the form of Near Field Communications (NFC); A redeemable points accumulation scheme.  

The system developed and field tested around one of the Royal Parks in London works by implying the location of a user at a given time which is triggered when a user scans an NFC tag with their phone. The different locations with distance between each location are known and this is linked to known calorie data for healthy adults undertaking various physical activities such as walking, running and cycling. This information is made available through a website so that users can gauge their level of activity and thus get direct feedback on their activities. Further, extra incentive is provided by the users accumulating Health points which could be redeemed against purchases.

At this stage it is too early to ascertain the real effects on users and therefore a long term study with an extended trial is planned for future to document experiences of users within the system and obtain feedback from the participants as to how the system fits into their daily routine.

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Comments

Interesting project, why NFC?

Sorcery-ltd | 20/11/2007, 16:02

Sounds great. I'd be interested to know why the choice of NFC rather than say GPS or an accelerometer/pedometer to monitor and estimate activity levels? Surely you would get much more accurate information with either of the latter two choices without the need to deliberately scan tags. So, is it just cost of the technology? Do you have anything similar planned with other technologies? Please keep us updated on this if it goes anywhere. Mark.

Re: NFC is good for you

coultonp | 21/11/2007, 12:01

Mark You are right in many ways GPS and a pedometer would be better. The argument here was that in London particularly the oyster card is hugely popular and IMHO its only a matter of time before NFC phones are in widespread use . This means that people could use the system as part of their daily activities very easily and we could perhaps modify their behavior encouraging them to get of the tube at a different point and say walk through the park. Further, you can also use NFC is places such as the tube were GPS would be useless. With the emergence of accelerometers on phones we will be able to implement pedometers easily but I expect NFC to have greater numbers on the lower end phones in the short term. I am working with GPS and heart rate monitors at moment which is interesting but I will blog more later about that.
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