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This webinar will showcase Emil Chiauzzi’s and Eric Hekler’s agile research project which focuses on behavior change in patients with MS through self-monitoring and self-experimentation.

About the project:

Wearable devices for self-tracking are often used with a focus on personal health data collection, but it is even more important to leverage such devices in a companion behavior change program. Eric Hekler and colleagues have recently advanced the concept of a DIY self-experimentation toolkit, which enables users to develop individualized behavior change plans based on principles such as positive reinforcement, stimulus control, and self-reward. This pilot study adapts this toolkit and tests the feasibility of a behavior-change course for wearables with multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. The ultimate goal is to enable a broad range of chronic disease patients to build behavior-change programs using wearables.We will first conduct 60-minute interviews with six MS patients recruited from a previous PLM wearables (FitBit OneTM) study sample. We will assess patients use of behavior change techniques, ways in which they integrate wearables into their lifestyles, and their recommendations for the behavior change course. Next, we will adapt the self-experimentation toolkit to develop a brief Wearables 101 course that can be delivered by a trained staff member (e.g., research assistant) in a 1:1 PowerPoint presentation. Finally, we will test the program with 20 MS patients from the previous PLM study. Participants will be asked to complete the course, use their FitBit OneTM and implement the behavior change plan for one month, and complete measures of activity and experiences with the course. This data and the wearable data (e.g., steps) will be analyzed to determine the feasibility of the course.