News and Events
Earlier this month, a conference on mHealth was held in Washington DC (Nov 8-10). Policy makers, company representatives, technical people, health professionals and people from the academia came together for presentations, expert panels, networking and sharing of experiences. Different mHealth services and products were introduced, and trends in mobility and mobile applications were discussed.
In late July, I participated in the IADIS conference on e-Health (a part of the IADIS Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems). The conference was held in Freiburg, Germany, located close to the borders to Switzerland and France. At the conference, I presented a paper written together with Hélène Sandmark. The title of our paper is “Multiple Help Online: An Integrated E-health System for Stress Management”. As a committee member of the conference, I also chaired one of the conference sessions.
A PhD student at DSV, Wah-Sui Almberg, participated and presented a paper at the parallel conference on ICT, Society and Human Beings.
Hélène Sandmark at the School of Health and Medical Sciences, Örebro University, and I have got a conference paper accepted at IADIS e-Health 2010. The conference is to be held in Freiburg, Germany, in late July. The paper is entitled “Multiple Help Online: An Integrated E-Health System for Stress Management”. Please see the paper abstract below.
In
working life of today, people experience high levels of stress and often react
strongly to different stressors. If one is exposed to high stress levels for a
long time, this may eventually lead to sickness and absence from work. Web
based systems are available today for people who suffer from stress. However,
these web based systems need to be further explored in order to meet different
‘on demand needs’ of people in stress. In order to offer people in stress a
broad palette of help and support, different forms of online help from both
health experts, peers and published material and exercise programs need to be
well integrated in the web based system. A system that offers multiple help online
can also let the users experience complemented advice and ideas regarding their
stress concerns. The web based stress management system proposed in this paper
outlines a combination of online interactions between health experts and people
in stress, community conversations among peers and published information and
exercises. The paper also introduces a set of design principles to be used to
guide the development of integrated online help for stress management.
On the 5th of May, 2010, I visited Microsoft research lab in Cambridge, outside London, for their event on Enabling Innovation through Research. Microsoft Research Cambridge is one of six Microsoft research labs in the world. The event was introduced by a keynote speech given by Andrew Herbert, the managing director of the lab. It showed that they have a wide range of research areas spanning from disease modeling and advertisements to inference and cloud computing. The lunch break that followed combined eating, chatting and walking around among product solutions from different research projects. The researchers were present and they gave us the opportunity to engage in nice discussions on the different solutions and their future plans. There were examples of interactive systems for medical images and body part recognition, painting and auto photo collage tools, for example.
For more information about the research event, please visit:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/events/eitr/
In addition, Microsoft Research arranges summer schools for PhD students, and they also have PhD Scholarship Programmes and Research Fellowships. Supervisors of PhD students are welcome to nominate projects and PhD students for the summer schools and PhD scholarship programmes.
More general information can be found at: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/cambridge/default.aspx
The agenda of this year’s summer school can be seen at:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/2010summerschool/
Nils Stadling, Microsoft, and I, at Microsoft Research Cambridge
Hélène Sandmark and I have recently got a conference paper accepted at the International Multi-Conference on Complexity, Informatics and Cybernetics, within the conference theme Bio-Medical Informatics. The conference is to be held 6-9 April, in Orlando, Florida, USA. We are going to participate virtually.
The paper is entitled “Stress Management 2.0 – A Holistic Approach to Self-management Online”.
Abstract:
The last years have put stress management on the agenda of healthcare. Intense lifestyles with job and domestic demands let people experience high levels of stress and to react strongly to different stressors. Long-term sickness and absence from work can be a consequence of too high stress exposure during a long period of time. This negative trend can be counteracted if we allow a combination of actions to support people who experience stressful lives. Different online programs are available for people with stress symptoms. However, there is a lack of conceptual understanding and a holistic approach to learning online for this group of people. In this article, we present a holistic and integrated approach to ‘stress management 2.0’ that considers several areas: stress management, self-management, informatics and continuous learning through communication and feedback. The approach is based on findings from previous research studies of web based solutions for learning new lifestyles, stress management and results from clinical trials. At the end of the article, we present some design principles to be used for developing systems in accordance with ‘stress management 2.0’ from a holistic view.
Keywords: Self-management, Stress management, Web based, Learning, Communication, Holistic
The interdisciplinary research group at DSV working with stress management and e-health communities has submitted a research project proposal to FAS – Forskningsrådet för arbetsliv och socialvetenskap/ Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research – in February this year. The project aims at developing a web based platform that will help working people with stress-related symptoms to increase their well-being and to be empowered at work. The platform applies characteristics of web 2.0, and it uses a holistic approach to combine information, counsel activities and self-help peer communities online. Participants with stress-related issues and health experts will use the platform to share experiences and knowledge and to develop good practices together through communication online. The project will apply results of modern research in the areas of stress and stress management, coping, web based interventions and e-health communities.
Hi,
I am in the process of editing a book entitled “E-Health Communities and Online Self-Help Groups: Applications and Usage” to be published by IGI Global (www.igi-global.com) scheduled for release in 2011. If you have ideas for a book chapter in this area, I would very much like you to contribute to the book. Or, perhaps you know someone that could be interested, who can be invited to send a chapter proposal. Call for chapters is available at http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=807.
/Åsa
Yesterday, on December 3, we had a lunch seminar on “E-health communities” at SYSLAB. I gave my view of the area and related to some of my research findings.
The seminar focused on e-health communities for people who suffer from established bad (unhealthy) habits, who try to lose weight or quit smoking. These communities aim at helping people change habits, and thereby reduce the risk of getting severe illnesses. The question is how these communities manage to support learning and behavioral change among the participants. During the seminar, I elaborated a bit on this theme and we had a nice discussion afterwards. The presentation slides are seen below.