NFC is good for you

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:33:57 +0200

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.

Mobile phones as data loggers and sensors

Thu, 10 May 2007 13:02:01 +0300

I previously posted an outline of a project I am working on with Will and colleagues from our Geography Department (Duncan Wyatt, Colin Pooley, Marion Moser, and Gemma Davies) which uses mobile and GPS units to both track (recording at 1 second intervals) the journey to school of 30 local children. The Geoblog app alsoallow the pupils to blog their experience along their route to create a richer picture than the route alone. A couple of people have asked me have we got any results so here is a quick taster of what we are producing and likely I will do more at a later date. A mixed methodology is used which links the data from the phones with a modelled pollution surfaces using a GIS system along personal and interviews with the pupils.

The figure below produced on a GIS system shows the journey of 3 pupils (names being pseudonyms chosen by themselves) on their journey to school. Scott cycled while Ella and Louise walked. From this we can ascertain the relative exposure levels to the pupils along the journey. An interesting point to note is the journey of Louise who cuts into the park parallel to the road and when asked in the interview about this she said it was because she didn’t like the traffic noise but was only allowed to do this at certain times in the year for personal safety. This highlights the need for a mixed methodology approach to these types of study and the power of inter-disciplinary research.

Based upon 2004, OS Landline. Map produced on behalf of The Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationary Office © Crown Copyright. Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster, OS Licence No. 100028811.

The project is producing some very interesting results and shows what interesting things we can do with our increasingly powerful phones and their potential as a very effective sensor and data gathering tool.

Paul Coulton's Forum Nokia Blog

NFC is good for you

Mobile phones as data loggers and sensors