General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and Encouragement
Good health is the result of a healthy lifestyle, where caring about physical activity and nutrition are key concerns. However, in today’s society, nutritional disorders are becoming increasingly frequent, affecting children, adults, and elderly people, mainly due to limited nutrition know...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2018-12-01
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| Series: | Sensors |
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| Online Access: | http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/1/108 |
| _version_ | 1811186102483025920 |
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| author | Antonio Benítez-Guijarro Ángel Ruiz-Zafra Zoraida Callejas Nuria Medina-Medina Kawtar Benghazi Manuel Noguera |
| author_facet | Antonio Benítez-Guijarro Ángel Ruiz-Zafra Zoraida Callejas Nuria Medina-Medina Kawtar Benghazi Manuel Noguera |
| author_sort | Antonio Benítez-Guijarro |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Good health is the result of a healthy lifestyle, where caring about physical activity and nutrition are key concerns. However, in today’s society, nutritional disorders are becoming increasingly frequent, affecting children, adults, and elderly people, mainly due to limited nutrition knowledge and the lack of a healthy lifestyle. A commonly adopted therapy to these imbalances is to monitor physical activity and daily habits, such as recording exercise or creating custom meal plans to count the amount of macronutrients and micronutrients acquired in each meal. Nowadays, many health tracking applications (HTA) have been developed that, for instance, record energy intake as well as users’ physiological parameters, or measure the physical activity during the day. However, most existing HTA do not have a uniform architectural design on top of which to build other applications and services. In this manuscript, we present system architecture intended to serve as a reference architecture for building HTA solutions. In order to validate the proposed architecture, we performed a preliminary evaluation with 15 well recognized experts in systems and software architecture from different entities around world and who have estimated that our proposal can generate architecture for HTA that is adequate, reliable, secure, modifiable, portable, functional, and with high conceptual integrity. In order to show the applicability of the architecture in different HTA, we developed two telemonitoring systems based on it, targeted to different tasks: nutritional coaching (Food4Living) and physical exercise coaching (TrainME). The purpose was to illustrate the kind of end-user monitoring applications that could be developed. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-11T13:41:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a50d7918ffef40218423faf96ce3bcf4 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1424-8220 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-11T13:41:00Z |
| publishDate | 2018-12-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Sensors |
| spelling | doaj.art-a50d7918ffef40218423faf96ce3bcf42022-12-22T04:21:16ZengMDPI AGSensors1424-82202018-12-0119110810.3390/s19010108s19010108General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and EncouragementAntonio Benítez-Guijarro0Ángel Ruiz-Zafra1Zoraida Callejas2Nuria Medina-Medina3Kawtar Benghazi4Manuel Noguera5Department of Languages and Computer Systems, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, SpainDepartment of Computer Engineering, University of Cádiz, 11519 Cádiz, SpainDepartment of Languages and Computer Systems, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, SpainDepartment of Languages and Computer Systems, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, SpainDepartment of Languages and Computer Systems, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, SpainDepartment of Languages and Computer Systems, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, SpainGood health is the result of a healthy lifestyle, where caring about physical activity and nutrition are key concerns. However, in today’s society, nutritional disorders are becoming increasingly frequent, affecting children, adults, and elderly people, mainly due to limited nutrition knowledge and the lack of a healthy lifestyle. A commonly adopted therapy to these imbalances is to monitor physical activity and daily habits, such as recording exercise or creating custom meal plans to count the amount of macronutrients and micronutrients acquired in each meal. Nowadays, many health tracking applications (HTA) have been developed that, for instance, record energy intake as well as users’ physiological parameters, or measure the physical activity during the day. However, most existing HTA do not have a uniform architectural design on top of which to build other applications and services. In this manuscript, we present system architecture intended to serve as a reference architecture for building HTA solutions. In order to validate the proposed architecture, we performed a preliminary evaluation with 15 well recognized experts in systems and software architecture from different entities around world and who have estimated that our proposal can generate architecture for HTA that is adequate, reliable, secure, modifiable, portable, functional, and with high conceptual integrity. In order to show the applicability of the architecture in different HTA, we developed two telemonitoring systems based on it, targeted to different tasks: nutritional coaching (Food4Living) and physical exercise coaching (TrainME). The purpose was to illustrate the kind of end-user monitoring applications that could be developed.http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/1/108telemonitoringhealthy habitsvirtual coachessystems and software architecturessoftware architecture evaluationsoftware development |
| spellingShingle | Antonio Benítez-Guijarro Ángel Ruiz-Zafra Zoraida Callejas Nuria Medina-Medina Kawtar Benghazi Manuel Noguera General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and Encouragement Sensors telemonitoring healthy habits virtual coaches systems and software architectures software architecture evaluation software development |
| title | General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and Encouragement |
| title_full | General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and Encouragement |
| title_fullStr | General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and Encouragement |
| title_full_unstemmed | General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and Encouragement |
| title_short | General Architecture for Development of Virtual Coaches for Healthy Habits Monitoring and Encouragement |
| title_sort | general architecture for development of virtual coaches for healthy habits monitoring and encouragement |
| topic | telemonitoring healthy habits virtual coaches systems and software architectures software architecture evaluation software development |
| url | http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/1/108 |
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