Designing mHealth systems for behaviour change

In recent years, the burden on healthcare systems around the world has profoundly increased due to an unprecedented rise of preventable lifestyle diseases, also referred to as non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which have grown at an alarming rate. Reduction in mortality from NCDs has shown to result from lifestyle changes, among other factors, specifically changes relating to smoking, nutrition, alcohol consumption, and physical activity. Despite the influence of lifestyle behaviours on NCDs being well documented and understood, raw health information alone in most cases is not enough to motivate people in the adoption of health behaviour change. Therefore, the problem lies in how to encourage positive health behaviour change in lifestyle. Novel approaches are required for more effective management of these behavioural factors which have been consistently identified as critical areas for intervention. The recent advances in mobile computing and mobile sensor technology provide an opportunity to explore the efficacy of novel mobile-based solutions as they potentially offer significant advantages over traditional forms of health care. However, doing so requires a multidisciplinary approach such as co-design, an area where research is in its infancy in the context of mHealth. Therefore, this thesis attempts to explore the current state of research on co-designing mHealth artifacts for disease management and health promotion, how one could design mHealth systems to use mobile biosensors for health behaviour change, how one could contextualize existing co-design frameworks to the mHealth setting, and what are guidelines that address common challenges in using co-design for mHealth systems development.