11-BIO1737-02

Summary: Obesity is a major health concern for the people in Saudi Arabia. It can lead to serious health problems including increased risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and insulin resistance in addition to psychosocial problems, functional limitations, and disabilities that adversely affect the social and physical abilities of the obese person in daily affairs. In this research, our long term goal is to augment current obesity treatment methods and empower therapists and patients with a novel computing system for continuous treatment and long-term management of obesity, especially in children and youths. We aim to develop fundamental technologies and systems to achieve this goal using pervasive computing, ambient sensors, and mobile gaming. Our system would provide stakeholders with improved tools and techniques to prevent or treat obesity by enabling continuous and accurate measurements of a patient's energy balance and health indicators, and by facilitating both the required treatment and the measurement of progress for both the therapist and the patient. At the same time, the system will use pervasive games to encourage and support the integration of a healthy lifestyle for the youth. The game difficulty is specifically adapted to each child according to their fitness level and will be increased as the patient makes progress. Finally, due to the group nature of the game, it will further boost socialization and increase the patient’s self confidence, an especially important problem in obese children.

I. Technical Objectives: (1) Assistive Obesity Treatment System a. Design and development of a pervasive system integrated with mobile sensors for continuous monitoring of the patient’s bio signals such as temperature, heart rate, respiration rate, etc. and BMI b. Design and development of a configurable and autonomous intelligent system, executable on smart phones, to provide on-the-spot feedback to the patient and to suggest actions in terms of energy in-take and physical activity. (2) Therapist and Treatment Workflow a. Design and development of a centralized information system for storage, analysis, and report generation for longer-term management of patient. b. Therapist access and configuration interfaces to allow augmentation of existing clinical therapy methods with the proposed system. (3) Pervasive Gaming a. Design and development of an adaptive multi-player pervasive game for effective treatment of obese youth. b. Design and development of mobile and pervasive gaming interfaces considering physical limitations, fitness, and preferences of the patients. (4) Disseminate research results to the broader industry and scientific community II Academic Objectives: The proposed project will promote collaborative research culture and strengthen the research infrastructure of the College of Computer and Information Sciences (CCIS) at KSU by developing new research capabilities and enhancing existing ones in the area of pervasive computing applications to hearth monitoring and management. Specific objectives include: (1) Improve Graduate Programs at KSU through increased student and faculty involvement in creative research, innovation and advancement of knowledge (2) Provide training and research support to High Qualified Personnel (HQP) (3) Widen KSU faculty research competitiveness in areas of high importance relating to pervasive computing applications for health monitoring (4) Promote KSU in scholarly community through presentation of scientific papers, attendance in international conferences, and publication in ISI-indexed journals. (5) Establish national-international collaboration model in the scientific community for the lasting reputation of KSU and of the Kingdom.