Smartphone-Enabled mHealth Sensorics for Digital Assistance of Human Autonomic Resilience to Stress

Abstract

Quality of life largely depends on the ability of a person to resist stress, what refers to the concept of resilience to stress. The priority groups are older and frail people, disabled people and people under strain conditions. The autonomic resilience, along with the motor and cognitive resilience, is regarded as one of the major components of resilience. In frail people, autonomic resilience is substantially reduced. In this concept position paper, we explore human autonomic sensorics when an mHealth system provides digital assistance in autonomic functioning of a person during her/his daily activity. The core of our concept is a smartphone which can used in person’s daily activity for monitoring such critical markers of the human autonomic function as orthostatic hypotension during transition from supine or sitting to standing position. A smartphone has potential to sense both blood pressure and heart rate during events of postural transition. The developed mHealth concept aims at digital support of the autonomic activity of a person in his/her daily life. The provided information encourages the person for better performance and results.

Keywords

• human sensorics
• ambient intelligence
• human resilience
• smartphone-enabled apps
• mhealth