Development of a Mobile Health Awareness Application for Back Pain Patients’ Using Persuasive Technology (MyBackRelief)

Back pain is one of the most neglected pain among adults and stretching is one of the best ways to prevent back pain in the long run for back pain patients. In this project, the author explores the prospectives on how to improve the state of back pain patients through mobile technology as well as looking into persuasive techniques suitable to persuade back patients to exercise. The main objectives of this project is to explore the use of mobile and persuasive technology for creating back care awareness among back pain patients. In addition, the objective is also to design and develop a mobile application on the Android operating system to accommodate back pain patients to have a companion which reminds and give the right guidance to improve their health state on back pain. Using Eclipse software, the author would develop a mobile application for Android named MyBackRelief. MyBackRelief is a mobile application that motivates the users to perform stretching through several persuasion techniques . Before developing the prototype, a sample group of users were taken to perform surveys to analyze in terms of technology as well as its effectiveness. The results and recommendations were shared by the end of the project as a key milestone for future renditions of the project.