Promoting preventive smart health in a smart city environment
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Journal Title
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Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2021
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
82+14
Series
Abstract
Significant advancements in healthcare and technology over the last century have resulted in increased quality of life and lifespan. Consequently, ageing population and growing number of people with behavior-related chronic diseases create increased economic costs and a burden on public healthcare. At the same time, accelerating urbanization is linked to chronic diseases as it has altered citizens’ lifestyles and living conditions. Smart cities have emerged to mitigate these types of different challenges cities are facing. Current smart city projects have had heavy emphasis on physical environment and infrastructure, economic growth and environmental protection, whereas little attention is paid to social equity, human experience or wellbeing. Therefore, this thesis argues that citizens’ health is one of the most prominent issues to be addressed in the context of smart cities and urbanization and it studies the avenues of smart health with a focus on wearable smart health technologies. The common element with wearables is the promise to assist individuals to improve their quality of life in terms of physical activity, diet and sleep. Despite the increasing popularity of wearables, little is researched on their actual impact on people’s behavior. There is also little evidence on which elements of wearables drive users to engage with them and to change their health-related behaviors. Thus, this thesis studies how wearable smart health services and the gamified elements incorporated in them impact citizens’ health behavior in terms of physical activity. The research is based on earlier literature about smart cities and wearable smart health technologies. The empirical part of this study is conducted by quantitative method and the data is collected using an online survey distributed among citizens of Finland and Estonia. The findings of the survey suggest that with the help of gamified elements, wearables have succeeded to increase physical activity in the everyday lives of citizens. Ultimately, the findings of this study aim to support digital implementation of FinEst-Twins – a smart city initiative between Helsinki and Tallinn.Description
Thesis advisor
Ghanbari, HadiRossi, Matti
Keywords
smart city, smart health, wearables, gamification