Mobile and Electronic Health ARC 2nd Annual Symposium Press Release

The Mobile and Electronic Health ARC’s 2^nd Annual Symposium was held on Thursday, November 2^nd 2017 at Boston University. There were over 85 attendees at the symposium, including those from BU School of Public Health, BU Goldman School of Dental Medicine, BU Sargent College, BU School of Medicine, Boston Medical Center, Bedford VA, BU Hariri/ Sail Institute, Institute for Health Systems Innovation and Policy (IHSIP), Dimagi,  BU Office of Technology, Harvard University, Brown University, MGH, and Cura Health.  Opening remarks were provided by Dr. Belinda Borrelli, who is Director of the ME-ARC and Professor at Boston University, and Dr. Karen Antman, Provost for the BU School of Medicine. The symposium consisted of three presentations that covered a variety of electronic health platforms (apps, sensors, text messaging and social media) and health behaviors. The symposium concluded with a networking session and refreshments.

*Slides now available! Please click hyperlinks to access each presentation.

Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz’s presentation was entitled, “mHealth⁴: Monitoring, Modeling, Modifying and Maintaining Health-Related Behavior Change in Real-Time.” Dr. Spruijt-Metz is a Research Professor and Director of the mHealth Collaboratory at the University of Southern California. Dr. Spruijt-Metz spoke about her research projects that involve mobile technologies to develop data sets that combine temporally dense and highly contextualized sensor and self-report data along with innovative modeling techniques to develop dynamic, individual mathematical models of health-related behavior. She was one of the first investigators to undertake just-in-time, adaptive intervention (JITAI) in youth.

The second presentation was entitled “Healthy Influencers? Social Media Use, Misinformation, and Health Behavior Change,” given by Dr. Jacob Groshek, Associate Professor at the BU College of Communications. He discussed the democratic utility of communication technologies and how use of both online and mobile media may influence sociopolitical and health-related changes. Dr. Groshek oversees the BUCAT, Boston University’s Twitter Collection and Analysis Toolkit, a software system that allows all BU affiliates to study social media approaches.

The third presentation was entitled,  “Mobile Health in Two Populations: Addressing Chronic Disease Management Through Text Messaging,” given by Dr. Keith McInnes, Associate Professor at the BU School of Public Health and Health Scientist at the Bedford VA. He discussed mobile health and applications of patient centered health informatics and quality of chronic disease health care across vulnerable populations.  The panel discussion was entitled, “Opportunities and Challenges for Academic-Industry Partnerships” and was moderated by Dr. Lisa Quintiliani, Co-Director for the ME-ARC and Assistant Professor in the BU Department of Medicine. Panelists gave short presentations, followed by a lively question and answer session with the audience.

Panel members included: Dr. Y. Xian Ho,  Research Associate at Dimagi, Inc, Dr. Andrei Lapets, Associate Professor in the BU Computer Science Department and Director of Hariri and SAIL, Dr. Swathi Kiran, Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing at BU Sargent College, and Nick Dougherty, Program Director at Pulse@Masschallenge.  Closing remarks were given by Dr. Julie Keysor, Co-Director for the ME-ARC, Associate Professor at BU Sargent College and Director of the Center for Enhancing Activity and Participation among People with Arthritis (ENACT).

Click HERE to see photos of the ME-ARC 2017 Symposium.