E-health support system for adequate caloric intake learning through simple meal survey and weight measurement

Recently aiming to prevent adult diseases with Information and Communication Technology, many research efforts have been made to construct electronic health-care systems that navigate users to improve their life styles. Most of existing systems, however, force users to measure various vital signs such as the blood pressure and the pulse, and/or directly attach a special device on their bodies. Therefore, it was difficult for ordinary users without serious health problems to continuously use those systems. Aiming to facilitate the continuous use of a health-care system, we propose a health support method that facilitates adequate daily caloric intake learning through only daily weight measurements and six levels subjective survey on each meal taken by the user. We developed a web based prototype system based on the proposed method. We report the result of evaluation experiments with the system by several users and clarify the additional challenges to be solved in the future.