Mobile Health With Head-Worn Devices: Challenges and Opportunities
Andrea Ferlini, Dong Ma, Lorena Qendro, Cecilia Mascolo
Abstract
Monitoring human behavior and health status using mobile devices, a.k.a. Mobile Health, has gained increasing attention from both academia and industry in recent years. It allows imperceptible health tracking from the users and remote health management from the healthcare service providers. Head-worn devices, such as earbuds, glasses, and brain–computer interfaces, exhibit great potential for mobile health due to their advantageous wearing position, the human head, which is motion-resilient and full of human biosignals. Although initial attempts have been conducted for different healthcare applications with head-worn devices, this fast-growing area is still underexplored and retains great promises. With this work, we investigate the most pressing challenges to fully exploit the potential of head-worn devices for mobile health, from the perspective of sensing, computing, and system design. Our exploration reveals key guidelines and lessons to inform future efforts in this space.