Personalized physical activity monitoring on the move

Abstract

Accurate Energy Expenditure (EE) estimation is key in understanding how behavior and daily Physical Activity (PA) patterns affect health. Mobile phones and wearable sensors (e.g. accelerometers (ACC) and heart rate (HR) monitors) have been widely used to monitor PA. In this paper we present a real-time implementation of activity-specific EE estimation algorithms, using an Health Patch and an iPhone. Our approach to continuous monitoring of PA targets personalized behavior and health status assessment, by automatically accounting for a person's cardiorespiratory fitness level (CRF), which is the main cause of inter-individual variation in HR during moderate to vigorous activities. The proposed system opens new opportunities for personalized health assessment in daily life, using ubiquitous devices.