Challenges and opportunities in mobile e-coaching

Abstract

Background: Mobile e-health technologies have proven to provide tailored assessment, intervention, and coaching capabilities for various usage scenarios. Thanks to their spread and adoption, smartphones are one of the most important carriers for such applications.

Problem: However, the process of design, realization, evaluation, and implementation of these e-health solutions is wicked and challenging, requiring multiple stakeholders and expertise.

Method: Here, we present a tailorable intervention and interaction e-health solution that allows rapid prototyping, development, and evaluation of e-health interventions at scale. This platform allows researchers and clinicians to develop ecological momentary assessment, just-in-time adaptive interventions, ecological momentary intervention, cohort studies, and e-coaching and personalized interventions quickly, with no-code, and in a scalable way.

Result: The Twente Intervention and Interaction Instrument (TIIM) has been used by over 320 researchers in the last decade. We present the ecosystem and synthesize the main scientific output from clinical and research studies in different fields.

Discussion: The importance of mobile e-coaching for prediction, management, and prevention of adverse health outcomes is increasing. A profound e-health development strategyand strategic, technical, and operational investments are needed to prototype, develop, implement, and evaluate e-health solutions. TIIM ecosystem has proven to support these processes. This paper ends with the main research opportunities in mobile coaching, including intervention mechanisms, fine-grained monitoring, and inclusion of objective biomarker data.

Keywords: JITAI; e-coaching; e-health; experience sample methodology; remote monitoring.