Smartphone-Based Passive Sensing for Behavioral and Physical Monitoring in Free-Life Conditions: Technical Usability Study

Abstract

Background Smartphone use is widely spreading in society. Their embedded functions and sensors may play an important role in therapy monitoring and planning. However, the use of smartphones for intrapersonal behavioral and physical monitoring is not yet fully supported by adequate studies addressing technical reliability and acceptance. Objective The objective of this paper is to identify and discuss technical issues that may impact on the wide use of smartphones as clinical monitoring tools. The focus is on the quality of the data and transparency of the acquisition process. Methods QuantifyMyPerson is a platform for continuous monitoring of smartphone use and embedded sensors data. The platform consists of an app for data acquisition, a backend cloud server for data storage and processing, and a web-based dashboard for data management and visualization. The data processing aims to extract meaningful features for the description of daily life such as phone status, calls, app use, GPS, and accelerometer data. A total of health subjects installed the app on their smartphones, running it for 7 months. The acquired data were analyzed to assess impact on smartphone performance (ie, battery consumption and anomalies in functioning) and data integrity. Relevance of the selected features in describing changes in daily life was assessed through the computation of a k-nearest neighbors global anomaly score to detect days that differ from others. Results The effectiveness of smartphone-based monitoring depends on the acceptability and interoperability of the system as user retention and data integrity are key aspects. Acceptability was confirmed by the full transparency of the app and the absence of any conflicts with daily smartphone use. The only perceived issue was the battery consumption even though the trend of battery drain with and without the app running was comparable. Regarding interoperability, the app was successfully installed and run on several Android brands. The study shows that some smartphone manufacturers implement power-saving policies not allowing continuous sensor data acquisition and impacting integrity. Data integrity was 96% on smartphones whose power-saving policies do not impact the embedded sensor management and 84% overall. Conclusions The main technological barriers to continuous behavioral and physical monitoring (ie, battery consumption and power-saving policies of manufacturers) may be overcome. Battery consumption increase is mainly due to GPS triangulation and may be limited, while data missing because of power-saving policies are related only to periods of nonuse of the phone since the embedded sensors are reactivated by any smartphone event. Overall, smartphone-based passive sensing is fully feasible and scalable despite the Android market fragmentation.