Designing Healthy Consumption Support: Mobile application use added to (e)Coach Solution

Healthy living is an increasingly important topic on the agenda of policy makers. Containment of health care cost through public health and specific prevention programs is seen as a key element of the current social-economic policies in the western world. mHealth technology holds the promise to make healthy living more effective than traditional prevention programs. As part of a broad healthy living support program (including food, physical activity, stress management, social support and smoking cessation), we extended web-based and coach-based ‘healthy consumption’ support with smart phone application (mApp) assistance. This paper focuses on the design analysis phase, following a design research cycle. We start from a user needs analysis, then proceed to solution analysis and service development. The result is a design solution, using an mApp for the support of healthy food consumption, together with practical ‘optimal diet’ guidelines. This solution is embedded in a health coach relationship. For the future, we anticipate more personal and intelligent mobile applications for health behavior tracking and feedback, plus an increasing role in health provider processes.