Making Sense in the Long Run: Long-Term Health Monitoring in Real Lives

Abstract

Long term self monitoring with connected personal health devices offers tremendous opportunities for wellbeing, health, and prevention. However, to date it is not fully understood how users perceive monitoring in the long term and how they implement it in their daily lives. We observed 7 participants that used a comprehensive set of connected personal health devices for 9 months and inquired their opinions and experiences. Users varied broadly in how they used the devices and how they engaged with the collected data. Implementation and use of long-monitoring evolved over time, leading to subtle but distinct differences to short term use. We found five relevant use cases: behavior support, improved self understanding, identification of trends and relations, decision making, and data collection for future use.