Usable Health

Ever walk into a cafeteria or restaurant hoping to find something fairly healthy but also somewhat tasty? Perhaps you have even considered changing your diet to gain more muscle or lose weight, but you wanted a way to enjoy food at numerous places without having to calorie crunch. If researchers at Georgia Tech have their way, making everyday healthy decisions will be easier than ever before.

BACKGROUND

Most of us lack the resources, will power, or knowledge to make healthy diet decisions on a regular basis. Usable Health, a company spawned from research at the Georgia Tech Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center (GVU), uses emerging technology to make healthy decisions easier by providing personalized real time information at crucial decision making moments. CEO Jiten Chhabra, a medical doctor by training with a degree in human computer interaction, and CSO Chad Bonner, a former healthcare consultant, co founded the company with the goal of advancing healthcare technology beyond serving solely as monitoring tools.

Chhabra acknowledges that there is a lot of healthcare information available. However, in its current embodiment, the information isn’t very usable because “it is hard for the average individual to process, typically pedagogical in nature, and seldom dynamic.” To the Usable Health founders, the Center for Disease Control is a prime example. The organization has expended many resources in order to create an online database of health related information.

However, Chhabra and Bonner attest that the information like that of other health information hubs does not address present realities.  Bonner has noted that the” average individual consumer of health information has a really hard time finding trustworthy information and getting actionable advice they can use in their everyday life.” How can the information be useful to the general populous if few people know how to use it or even what to look for?

AUTOMATED HEALTHCARE INTERVENTION

Instead of merely capturing health data and alerting a healthcare provider if dangerous values are observed, Usable Health has moved passive data capturing forward to automated health care intervention.

Rather than just keeping track of temporal data such as weight, Usable Health employs the concept of automated health care intervention by matching a user’s information to real life datasets and profile information in order to provide real time recommendations.  These recommendations can be accessed via touch-screen kiosks installed in cafeterias and restaurants, a toll-free interactive voice response telephone support line, simple text messaging, smart phone applications, and any web-enabled personal computer.

For example, if a user has been logging weight electronically and wants to know what to purchase at a particular restaurant when she has arrived, she could log into one of Usable Health’s systems to get a recommendation for that specific restaurant in keeping with her goals.

Generating a real time recommendation at a decision point empowers users by giving them information about the nutritional value of various combinations of their choosing and also suggested combinations with the best health scores that also match their taste preferences.  Still, does this information lead to any significant behavior change?

RESEARCH

In the last two decades, healthcare research has mainly focused on hospitals, healthcare providers, and doctors. The push to digitize healthcare records has galvanized the technological integration of health data to make it easily accessible to healthcare professionals.  However, the main focus in recent years has not been on enabling ordinary individuals to use their own health data practically in everyday situations.
Chhabra and Bonner are at the forefront of a new branch of healthcare research that investigates the efficacy of self monitoring health programs that are built using evidence based recommendations. Their research is advised by Dr. Elizabeth Mynatt, the head of the Every Day Computing Lab and the director of the GVU. With funding from the National Science Foundation and the Georgia Research Alliance, the team is investigating the main question in this research space: “Does delivering real time recommendations based on legitimate medical data make a difference in health?”
To address this question, Chhabra and Bonner perform standard trials with their product deployments to compare the impact of their technology to the results of the currently accepted practices. They have broken these trails into several phases.
The first phase has focused on assessing the level of empowerment this technology gives to users. Research was conducted with Usable Health’s flagship product Dr. J Says. After interviewing students, Chhabra discovered that a major hurdle that reportedly prevented the interviewees from reaching some of their health goals was knowing what to eat on a meal by meal basis at various on campus dining locations. Though it would be improbable to have a personal dietician sitting on your shoulder giving you advice in Jiminy Cricket fashion, Chhabra embodied this idea of ubiquitous personalized recommendations from an expert source in Dr. J Says.
Dr. J Says employs automated health care intervention by allowing users to fill out health profiles, and then using a powerful patent pending recommendation algorithm, provides menu suggestions to keep users on track. They system was first tested with Georgia Tech cafeterias, Woodruff and Brittain. After completing a short profile, students could simply swipe their identification cards and then see a list of suggested meals in keeping with their health goals based on the food available during the current dining period. While older versions of the system allowed users to customize their own meals, newer iterations of the system not only show the health scores of combinations but also the amount of minutes running or walking needed to burn off the calories. The system even goes a step further by offering the locations of near by gyms.
Preliminary data from the National Science Foundation-sponsored research study have been very promising. Based on responses to a standardized questionnaire administered by a registered dietitian, 80 percent of user reported confidence in making health decisions after using the software, compared with only 50 percent reporting such confidence in pre-study evaluations.

RESEARCH AND INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS

Studying the effect of personalized healthcare technology on behavior change is largely unexplored territory. The results of current research could significantly change the way in which healthcare providers engage with the rest of us, and how we go about making healthy decisions. If it is shown that Usable Health’s products do lead to significant changes in behavior that reduce overall health costs and preventable ailments, the ramifications will be huge.
According to Chhabra, “Georgia Tech students have been instrumental in shaping Usable Health and much of the current success has been the result of graduate and undergraduate involvement.” You can continue the legacy of student contribution by becoming a part of this groundbreaking work.

The second phase of research will examine if automated health care intervention makes any significant changes to behavior. In addition to offering Usable Health for free to the entire Georgia Tech community this spring, the team will deploy pilots of their software with Georgia-based Norfolk Southern and Lowndes County Partnership for Health.  They have also release an Iphone app that is integrated into the new Official Georgia Tech Iphone Application under development.

Chhabra and Bonner will be inviting all members of the Georgia Tech community to become free users of the software in a “private beta” release of the software in Spring 2010. By signing up, Tech students, staff, faculty, alumni, friends and family will be able to get very personalized dietary recommendations at restaurants and grocery stores on and around campus. To receive a “private beta” invitation, send an email to: chad@usablehealth.com.

If you happen to see a Usable Health kiosk on campus—or a Usable Health sticker on a restaurant window—give it a try, and give the team some feedback. You can find more information about the company at www.usableheatlh.com.

Hear our exclusive interview with the Usable Health founders at www.gtfirewall.com.