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Taking the Difference Between Leisure Time and Workdays Into Account to Improve Virtual Coaching

Authors:
Talko Dijkhuis
Johan Blok
Hugo Velthuijsen
Koen Lemmink

Keywords: monitoring physical activity; circadian rhythm; inference statistics; machine learning; intervention

Abstract:
A sedentary lifestyle is a cause for many health problems. To motivate employees to a healthier lifestyle and to physical activity, the Hanze University initiated a health promotion program, including a fortnightly coaching on lifestyle and activity. An activity tracker was used to monitor the participants’ steps. However the used activity tracker doesn’t provide timely personalized coaching. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of enhancing timely personalized virtual coaching. Therefore we investigated the manner in which the predictability of physical activity of a participant during the day can be improved. We focussed on the individual differences as well as the difference in activity and the circadian rhythm between free time and workdays. Exploring the data of the experiment the collected step count data was used to examine whether there was a significant difference between leisure time, such as weekends, holidays, and workdays. Taking the findings of this investigation into account, we augmented individual machine learning models. The training of algorithms per participant in combination with time sliced datasets improved the accuracy of the prediction during the day of one meeting his or her daily goal. The use of personalized prediction models, applied machine learning, and the consideration of the difference between leisure time and workdays, will become a valuable and viable addition to a virtual coaching system helping the participants in achieving a healthy lifestyle and enabling a virtual coaching system that intervenes at the appropriate points in time.

Pages: 30 to 33

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2019

Publication date: February 24, 2019

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4359

ISBN: 978-1-61208-688-0

Location: Athens, Greece

Dates: from February 24, 2019 to February 28, 2019