The market has a wide range of mobile applications related to food, nutrition, well-being and e-health. These new technologies aid prevention and, follow-up and health management and lifestyle.
But one of the biggest challenges in preventing the generalised use of personalised nutrition is data collection. The data most difficult to obtain is daily intake of foodstuffs. New ways of collecting this data must be developed. It is also necessary for the genetic data collection technique to be as little invasive as possible and fully respecting our privacy. Therefore, the means of collecting the user’s data (genetic and nutritional) are key to the tool’s success.
The registration: crucial for a crush at first sight
Different studies conducted by OCU identified a list of requirements for an e-health tool. The main conclusions are that such a tool must be both user-friendly and personalised. The initial registration must fit the user’s preferences to the content shown on the platform. Throughout the interaction, the platform “learns” the articles the user reads, what interests them and what they don’t like, to offer them a service adapted to this learning.
The key points are:
- In the first interaction on the platform, four basic details must be requested: age, sex, weight and height.
- Show questions as the user moves further into the platform, updating and saving changes to make the experience more personal each time they enter.
- Do not present questions in questionnaire form. Time these with the interactions that appear, e.g. pop-up windows asking about how much sport they do, their nutrition preferences and what they don’t like, their allergies or illnesses.
- To ensure that all fields are completed, include a percentage completed bar or ticks.
The data to be completed must be easy to update when the individual’s circumstances, such as weight, change. The tool can have utilities when it comes to shopping, activating or deactivating notifications in holiday times, etc. and notifications must be limited in order not to overwhelm the user.
Day to day help
If providing a shopping assistance service, the features of the service need to include:
- Shopping list with visual icons of each food and several notifications days in advance.
- Geolocation on supermarket shelves.
- Personalization according to date of purchase, preferred ingredients or reminders based on personal calendar.
- Possibility of including the home delivery service for sending of ingredients for cooking the dishes of interest to the user.
- Saving the menus, recipes and shopping lists that have been suggested in order to be able to consult them again if necessary and enable the rating of favourite items.
To maintain the “engagement” with the users, it is necessary to create a communication channel, which alerts them at key moments without interrupting their daily routines. This requires:
- To connect with the user’s personal calendar via email.
- Both inside the platform, via a mailbox or visual signal with alerts of new content, and outside the platform, by mobile or email, it is necessary to have a means of communication with the participants.
However, care must be taken not to “tire” the user with the frequency of the alerts. Only send alerts about the topic they are interested in, do not send alerts during their holidays, etc. Taking into account that it is an online platform, so the means of contacting the user is via email or SMS.
Last but not least: care for private data
The information on data protection must be accessible on the platform and must be drawn up as comprehensively as possible, in clear language. Any change to the terms and conditions of the service that has to do with data protection must be communicated in a reliable way.
Being health data sensible, the consent must be explicit. This consent is not bound to the acceptance of the contract and that it is done before any payment is made.
The person responsible for the tool must be able to demonstrate how they have obtained the data, how they keep them and register them in accordance with the laws in force.
The data collected have ARCO rights, i.e. rights of access, rectification, limitation of processing, deletion (the user can ask to delete the personal data: “the right to be forgotten”) and portability.
Finally, according to the studies performed by OCU for PREVENTOMICS project, 67% of respondents think that an application can help change lifestyle habits by taking biomarkers into account to prevent illnesses. Users trust and confidence should be carefully built so that they don’t think that PREVENTOMICS system is “just another tool” on the market. It is important to be transparent and use simple language so that the user perfectly understands the tool’s characteristics (especially everything relating to the data protection) but without being too simplistic.
OCU is a private independent non-profit organization that aims to promote and defend the interests of consumers, guiding them in their choices as consumers, working to help them solve their problems within the consumption of different products and to assert their fundamental rights as consumers. OCU works on different projects interesting for consumers and healthy diet is one of priorities of the association. Regarding healthy eating habits, OCU participates in dissemination campaigns in several media such as television, press, expertise magazines, the site www.ocu.org and more particularly https://www.ocu.org/alimentacion/comer-bien , having capacity to reach a great number of users.
