Title: Goal-Directed Self-Tracking in the Management of Chronic Health Conditions
Advisors: James Fogarty and Sean Munson
Supervisory Committee: James Forgarty (Co-Chair), Sean Munson (Co-Chair, HCDE), Wanda Pratt (GSR, iSchool), and Jennifer Mankoff
Abstract: Health technologies are increasingly prevalent and important to support the management of chronic conditions. Such health technologies often rely on self-tracking, or the practice of collecting and reflecting on personal data, to help people better understand their symptoms and learn how their habits and behaviors affect those symptoms. Many people with chronic conditions and their health providers believe that self-tracking offers a potential for more complete, accurate, and longer-term understanding of personal health. However, people and their health providers often struggle to collect and get value from data, leaving this potential largely unmet.
My dissertation work will examine how health technologies can support chronic condition management in three complex health contexts. In this proposal, I summarize my prior work in the domains of mental health and irritable bowel syndrome. This prior work revealed nuanced and personalized goals that individuals with chronic conditions and their health providers often developed throughout the management of their condition. Based on these findings, I propose goal-directed self-tracking to elicit and support the multiple, distinct, and evolving goals people and their health providers may have for the personalized management of their chronic condition. I will explore goal-directed self-tracking in the context of migraine to investigate how it can help people and health providers describe their current goals, configure a tracking routine to collect exactly and only the data they need to collect to achieve those goals, and interpret the resulting data appropriately given those goals. My dissertation will therefore contribute new understanding, methods, and tools to support people with chronic conditions and their health providers in expressing and pursuing their multiple, distinct, and evolving goals.
