Last September researchers in the field of ICT, engineers, healthcare professionals and patient representatives gather in the charming Palazzo dei Congressi in Florence for MobileHCI 2016, the 18th International conference on human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services. In the context of this important conference, myAirCoach organized on the 6th of September a workshop entitled Mobile Healthcare for the Self-Management of Chronic Diseases and the Empowerment of Patients, where novel mHealth approaches for the empowerment of chronic patients were presented and discussed as well as opportunities and challenges in the design of mobile applications in the modern technological environment.
The workshop was divided in three sessions: the first Paper Session, focused on “Mental disorders in the Modern mHealth environment”, was composed by three speeches.
The first one, titled “Opportunities for Technology in Self-Management of Mental Health” and presented by E. Murnane from Cornell University, explained how individuals with bipolar disorder could manage their condition through technology, focusing on the preliminary mobile sensing techniques to passively detect and predict episodes (“MoodRhythm”).
Applications supporting the mobility and communication of people with Intellectual and Development Disabilities (IDD) (“Travel and Communication Assistant”) was the subject of the second speech, presented by M. Kultsoce, from Volgograd State Technical University and titled “Assistive Mobile Application for Support of Mobility and Communication of People”. This application has a cross-platform implementation, a rich functionality to provide the support of mobility and communication of people with IDD and an adaptive dynamic interface for users.
Last speech, titled “Technologies to Support Psychologists and Patients Interactions” and presented by A. Lopez from Instituto Politécnico Castelo Branco, focused on the development of a technological tool which could address the psychologists’ preoccupations concerning the patients’ management information and serving as a mediated tool for the supervision of their relationships.

The second Paper Session was dedicated to “Mobile applications for the management of chronic conditions”. Every speeches explained a different way in which mobile technologies could analyze the patient’s daily behaviors in order to improve patients’ quality of life.
The first speech, titled “Fingerprints: Detecting Meaningful Moments for Mobile Health Intervention” and presented by Y. Wang, explained the “fingerprints” technique as a way to support mHealth interventions by detecting users' daily routines and meaningful moments. The use of wearable sensors, such as Fitbit1, ihealth2 and smartwatch (“mychron”), as a help for users in order to monitors their physiological data, was the subject of the second and third speeches, titled respectively “Mobile apps for IBD Self-Management using Wearable Devices and Sensors”, presented by C. Pernencar of UNIDCOM/IADE and “Standing Hypotension Prediction based on Smartwatch Heart Rate Variability Data: A Novel Approach”, presented by D. Iakovakis from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
“Wearable Devices and AI Techniques Integration to Promote Physical Activity”, presented by D. Baretta from University of Milano-Bicocca, was the last of this session and it was focused on the opportunities offered by mobile technologies for supporting PA, especially if combined with psychological aspects, model-based reasoning systems and personalized human computer interaction.
 
Last paper session was focused on user centered design and personalization of mHealth solutions targeting chronic conditions. In particular, the first speech, presented by B. R. Barricelli from the University of Milan and titled “Sociotechnical Design of mHealth Applications for Chronic Diseases”, aimed at briefly presenting the authors’ previous experience in the field of sociotechnical design of mHealth applications and at illustrating the opportunity in joining forces of multidisciplinary researchers, domain experts, and practitioners for improving the field (“MANTRA Project design”). The second one, titled “Towards Successful Self-Management and Empowerment for COPD Patients”, presented by B. Zachmann from  AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, was focused on assistive technologies as a better solution for empowering people to handle their chronic disease autonomously.
The importance of a personalisation environment supporting customisation of AAL applications by end users (“AAL Personalisation Rule Editor”) was the subject of the third speech, titled “End-User Personalization of Context-dependent Applications in AAL scenarios”, and presented by C. Santoro from CNR-ISTI, HIIS Laboratory.
Last part was dedicated to identify challenges in the domain of lifestyle promotion, and proposes a diet management system after investigating the challenges in existing system design. It was introduced the building blocks to overcome issues in adhering users to a healthy diet, by following a step by step process and making a change at a time (“COACHME”). This paper was titled “CoachMe: A Platform for Promoting Healthy Lifestyle” and it was presented by A. Fadhil from Centro Ricerche GPI, Fondazione Bruno Kessler(FBK-irst).

The workshop ended with an overview of myAirCoach, presented by Konstantinos Votis from the Centre For Research & Technology Hellas, and with a final round table where current challenges in mHealth were addressed (eg Clinical Significance, Regulatory Framework, Standardization, Usability, Engagement and Adherence, Gamification, Social Networks, Security, Privacy and Ethics)
The workshop received very positive feedback and was the most attended at MobileHCI. We hope that this served as an opportunity for establishing synergies and profitable collaborations aimed at providing better and more effective mHealth solutions! 

Please visit the website of the workshop for more details and material (Link)