Elia Gabarron

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Østfold University College

Background As type 2 diabetes (T2D) is expected to increase, self-management becomes more crucial. Mobile apps are increasingly supporting self-management with tasks like blood glucose monitoring and medication management. Understanding the behavioral intervention functions used by diabetes apps today, is essential for improving future apps and sys...

Introduction Digital health interventions specifically those realized as chatbots are increasingly available for mental health. They include technologies based on artificial intelligence that assess user’s sentiment and emotions for the purpose of responding in an empathetic way, or for treatment purposes, e.g. for analyzing the expressed emotions...

Background Most studies do not produce their intended outcomes on time or within budget. However, it is challenging to identify the facilitators and barriers to successful study management when the “behind the scenes action” of especially digitally enabled health research studies are akin to a black box. Therefore, it is necessary to explore first-...

Introduction: Autistic individuals, parents, organizations, and healthcare systems worldwide are actively sharing content aimed at increasing awareness about autism. This study aims at analyzing the type of contents presented in TikTok and YouTube Shorts videos under the hashtag #actuallyautistic and their potential to increase autism awareness. Me...

Introduction: Norway has a high use of e-health. Methods: This paper summarizes and discusses the published data from the Tromsø 7 Study, conducted between 2015 and 2016, focusing on e-health utilization in the Norwegian population aged 40 and above. Results: More than half of the participants reported using the Internet for health purposes. The ma...

Background and objective: Social media physical activity chatbots use both chatbots and social media platforms for physical activity promotion and, thus, could face privacy and security challenges inherent in both technologies. This study aims to provide an overview of physical activity chatbot interventions delivered via social media platforms, s...

Searches for autism on social media have soared, making it a top topic. Social media posts convey not only plain text, but also sentiments and emotions that provide insight into the experiences of the autism community. While sentiment analysis categorizes overall sentiment, emotion analysis provides nuanced insights into specific emotional states....

Background Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to enhance physical activity (PA) interventions. However, human factors (HFs) play a pivotal role in the successful integration of AI into mobile health (mHealth) solutions for promoting PA. Understanding and optimizing the interaction between individuals and AI-driven mHealth apps is essent...

Background Regular physical activity helps to reduce weight and improve the general well-being of individuals living with obesity. Chatbots have shown the potential to increase physical activity among their users. We aimed to explore the preferences of individuals living with obesity for the features and functionalities of a modern chatbot based on...

Background: Most studies do not produce their intended outcomes on time or within budget. However, it is challenging to identify the facilitators and barriers to successful study management when the “behind the scenes action” of especially digitally enabled health research studies are akin to a black box. Therefore, it is necessary to explore first...

The aim of this study was to explore how autistic adults experienced using social media to find information about autism, and how they experienced online autistic communities. There is little research on the rationale why autistic people look for information on autism via social media, and on how such information is perceived from an autistic viewp...

The application of digital interventions in healthcare beyond research has been translated in the development of software as a medical device. Along with corresponding regulations for medical devices, there is a need for assessing adverse events to conduct post-market surveillance and to appropriately label digital health interventions to ensure pr...

Objective: To identify links between Participatory Health Informatics (PHI) and the One Digital Health framework (ODH) and to show how PHI could be used as a catalyst or contributor to ODH. Methods: We have analyzed the addressed topics within the ODH framework in previous IMIA Yearbook contributions from our working group during the last 10 years....

Background Vaccination programs are instrumental in prolonging and improving people’s lives by preventing diseases such as measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and influenza from escalating into fatal epidemics. Despite the significant impact of these programs, a substantial number of individuals, including 20 million infants annually, lack suf...

Background: With the rise of social media, social media use for delivering mental health interventions has become increasingly popular. However, there is no comprehensive overview available on how this field developed over time. Objectives: The objective of this paper is to provide an overview over time of the use of social media for delivering me...

Universities are facing many challenges as they are expected to prepare their students in the best possible way to contribute to sustainable societal- and industrial development. Students will become researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and role models, and should be able to contribute in the transition to a greener and smarter future. The task...

Motivation: Digital therapeutics (DTX), i.e., health interventions that are provided through digital means, are increasingly available for use; in some countries, physicians can even prescribe selected DTX following a reimbursement by health insurances. This results in an increasing need for methodologies to consider and monitor DTX's negative con...

Introduction: Mental health is one of the major global concerns in the field of healthcare. The emergence of digital solutions is proving to be a great aid for individuals suffering from mental health disorders. These solutions are particularly useful and effective when they are personalized. The objective of this paper is to understand the person...

Introduction Mobile health, or mHealth, is based on mobile information and communication technologies and provides solutions for empowering individuals to participate in healthcare. Personalisation techniques have been used to increase user engagement and adherence to interventions delivered as mHealth solutions. This study aims to explore the curr...

Social media provide easy ways to autistic individuals to communicate and to make their voices heard. The objective of this paper is to identify the main themes that are being discussed by autistic people on Twitter. We collected a sample of tweets containing the hashtag #ActuallyAutistic during the period 10/02/2022 and 14/09/2022. To identify the...

Social media chatbots could help increase obese adults' physical activity behaviour. The study aims to explore obese adults' preferences for a physical activity chatbot. Individual- and focus group interviews will be conducted in 2023. Identified preferences will inform the development of a chatbot that motivates obese adults to increase their phys...

In this review we give an insight into peer-reviewed publications on types of savant abilities, and the historical progress over the years in autism research

Background Research on the use of digital technologies for delivering behavioral interventions has shown mixed evidence on their efficacy for improving both autistic symptoms and co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Little knowledge exists on the specific use or efficacy of using social media in interventions aimed at autistic individuals. Objectiv...

Background: Health care has evolved to support the involvement of individuals in decision making by, for example, using mobile apps and wearables that may help empower people to actively participate in their treatment and health monitoring. While the term "participatory health informatics" (PHI) has emerged in literature to describe these activiti...

This proceeding presents the papers presented at the 18th Scandinavian Conference on Health Informatics - SHI 2022 in Tromsø, Norway on August 22-24, 2022. The SHI conference is an annual scientific event attended by scientist and practitioners working in the field of Health Informatics. The area of Health informatics is driven by development in t...

Performing regular physical activity can be challenging. Integrating chatbots with social media platforms and physical activity sensors can potentially increase physical activity. The objective of this study was to identify design preferences for integrating an activity tracker supported chatbot in a social media platform. Norwegian adults (n=120)...

The recent pandemic highlighted telemedicine’s potential for continuity of remote diabetes patients’ care. The study objective was to identify diabetes telemedicine services, benefits, and challenges in Norway. We searched for publications on the topic in PubMed, ScienceDirect, CINAHL, and Nora. Most of the included studies (7/15) focused on teleme...

This review provides an overview of the existing research on social media, autism, and physical activity. We searched for publications on PubMed, PsycInfo, Embase, Education source, ERIC, IEEE Xplore, and the proceedings from conferences on health informatics and autism. Eight studies were included in this review. Studies reported mixed results on...

Background: The development of COVID-19 vaccines has been crucial in fighting the pandemic. However, misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines is spread on social media platforms at a rate that has made the World Health Organization coin the phrase infodemic. False claims about adverse vaccine side effects, such as vaccines being the...

Objective: Social media is used in the context of healthcare, for example in interventions for promoting health. Since social media are easily accessible they have potential to promote health equity. This paper studies relevant factors impacting on health equity considered in social media interventions. Methods: We searched for literature to identi...

Telemedicine can be useful for diabetes patients living remotely, especially during pandemic times. We aimed to identify current knowledge of the use of telemedicine for diabetes in Norway by conducting a review of the literature. Telemedicine is mostly beneficial, and it seems that it can be adopted into the usual diabetes care in Norway as a low-...

Digital interventions for increasing physical activity behavior have shown great potential, especially those with social media. Chatbots, also known as conversational agents, have emerged in healthcare in relation to digital interventions and have proven effective in promoting physical activity among adults. The study’s objective is to explore user...

Background: On May 8, 2021, Elon Musk, a well-recognized entrepreneur and business magnate, revealed on a popular television show that he has Asperger syndrome. Research has shown that people’s perceptions of a condition are modified when influential individuals in society publicly disclose their diagnoses. It was anticipated that Musk's disclosure...

Background: The development of COVID-19 vaccines has been crucial in fighting the pandemic. However, misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines is spread on social media platforms at a rate that has made the World Health Organization (WHO) coin the phrase "infodemic." Misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on social media is a major challenge, as...

The development of COVID-19 vaccines has been crucial in fighting the pandemic. Misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on social media is a major challenge, as this is thought to contribute to vaccine hesitancy. Here, we review the research on misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines spread on social media platforms. The review is registered with the...

Advances in voice recognition, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence have led to the increasing availability and use of conversational agents (chatbots) in different settings. Chatbots are systems that mimic human dialogue interaction through text or voice. This paper describes a series of design considerations for integrating ch...

Fully automated self-help interventions integrated with social media chatbots could serve as highly cost-effective physical activity promotion tools for a large population. We have developed MYA, a Telegram-based chatbot for increasing physical activity. The objective of this study was to assess the usability of MYA. To identify usability issues, w...

BACKGROUND On May 8, 2021, Elon Musk, a well-recognized entrepreneur and business magnate, revealed on a popular television show that he has Asperger syndrome. Research has shown that people’s perceptions of a condition are modified when influential individuals in society publicly disclose their diagnoses. It was anticipated that Musk's disclosure...

Objective To review misinformation related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on social media during the first phase of the pandemic and to discuss ways of countering misinformation. Methods We s e a r c h e d P u b M e d ® , S c o p u s , E m b a s e ® , P s y c I n f o a n d G o o g l e S c h o l a r d a t a b a s e s o n 5 May 2020 and 1 Ju...

Research on artificial intelligence (AI) for healthcare gained interest in recent years. However, the use of AI in daily clinical practice is still rare. We created and distributed an online survey among professionals working within the health informatics field to explore their views. The provided answers were classified into referring or not to: 1...

Health-dedicated groups on social media provide different contents and social support to their peers. Our objective is to analyze users’ engagement with health education and physical activity promotion posts according to the expressed social support and social media. All health education and physical activity promotion posts on Facebook, Twitter, a...

Diabetes self-management, an integral part of diabetes care, can be improved with the help of digital self-management tools such as apps, sensors, websites, and social media. The study objective was to reach a consensus on the criteria required to assess and recommend digital diabetes self-management tools targeting those with diabetes in Norway. H...

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of the world's most common neurologic disorders. Social media have been proposed as a way to maintain and even increase social interaction for people with MS. The objective of this work is to identify and compare the topics on Twitter during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Data was colle...

Background As a major public health crisis, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic demonstrates the urgent need for safe, effective, and evidence-based implementations of digital health. The urgency stems from the frequent tendency to focus attention on seemingly high promising digital health interventions despite being poorly valid...

The purpose of this study was to examine Internet trends data and sentiment in tweets mentioning autism, Asperger syndrome, and Greta Thunberg during 2019. We used mixed methods in analyzing sentiment and attitudes in viral tweets and collected 1074 viral tweets on autism that were published in 2019 (tweets that got more than 100 likes). The sample...

Objectives: Using participatory health informatics (PHI) to detect disease outbreaks or learn about pandemics has gained interest in recent years. However, the role of PHI in understanding and managing pandemics, citizens’ role in this context, and which methods are relevant for collecting and processing data are still unclear, as is which types of...

Healthcare has been shifting toward individuals participating in decision-making and empowered to be active in their treatment, and health monitoring. The term “participatory health informatics” (PHI) started to appear in literature. A clear definition of PHI is missing, and facets of PHI still have to be shaped. The objective of this paper is to o...

Objective To determine the effectiveness of physical activity interventions involving mobile applications (apps) or trackers with automated and continuous self-monitoring and feedback. Design Systematic review and meta-analysis. Data sources PubMed and seven additional databases, from 2007 to 2020. Study selection Randomised controlled trials in...

Background Diabetes patient associations and diabetes-specific patient groups around the world are present on social media. Although active participation and engagement in these diabetes social media groups has been mostly linked to positive effects, very little is known about the content that is shared on these channels or the post features that e...

Background: There is growing evidence that apps and digital interventions have a positive impact on diabetes self-management. Standard self-management for patients with diabetes could therefore be supplemented by apps and digital interventions to increase patients’ skills. Several initiatives, models, and frameworks suggest how health apps and digi...

Background and objective: Social media could be valuable tools to support people with multiple sclerosis (MS). There is little evidence on the MS-related topics that are discussed on social media, and the sentiment linked to these topics. The objective of this work is to identify the MS-related main topics discussed on Twitter, and the sentiment l...

Background and objective: The number of publications on the use of chatbots for health is recently increasing, however to our knowledge, there are no publications summarizing what is known about using chatbots for public health yet. The objective of this work is to provide an overview of the existing scientific literature on the use of chatbots fo...

Background: Despite the prevalence of mobile health (mHealth) technologies and observations of their impacts on patients’ health, there is still no consensus on how best to evaluate these tools for patient self-management of chronic conditions. Researchers currently do not have guidelines on which qualitative or quantitative factors to measure or h...

The importance of e-health to citizens, patients, health providers, governments, and other stakeholders is rapidly increasing. E-health services have a range of advantages. For instance, e-health may improve access to services, reduce costs, and improve self-management. E-health may allow previously underserved populations to gain access to service...

Objectives: To identify the different ethical issues that should be considered in participatory health through social media from different stakeholder perspectives (i.e., patients/service users, health professionals, health information technology (If) professionals, and policy makers) in any healthcare context. Methods: We implemented a two-round s...

BACKGROUND There is growing evidence that apps and digital interventions have a positive impact on diabetes self-management. Standard self-management for patients with diabetes could therefore be supplemented by apps and digital interventions to increase patients’ skills. Several initiatives, models, and frameworks suggest how health apps and digit...

Research often presents patient needs from perceptions of healthcareprofessionals and researchers. Today, patients can formulate tailored questions and seek solutions for what they need to self-managein many ways. We aimed to compare reported outcomes of mHealth and online intervention studies for diabetes self-management to patient-reported needs,...

BACKGROUND Despite the prevalence and noted health impacts of mobile health (mHealth) technologies for patients, there is still no clear standard for how to evaluate these tools for patient self-management of chronic conditions. OBJECTIVE This scoping review aims to document the methods and measures used to assess mHealth apps and system intervent...

Objective: Artificial intelligence (AI) provides people and professionals working in the field of participatory health informatics an opportunity to derive robust insights from a variety of online sources. The objective of this paper is to identify current state of the art and application areas of AI in the context of participatory health. Methods:...

Background:: Use of social media is increasing rapidly, also in health care and diabetes. However, patients, health care personnel, and patient organizations discuss diabetes on social media very differently. This has led to a lack of common ground when these stakeholders communicate about diabetes and a gap in understanding one another's point of...

Background: The authors present a case study of a public health campaign, including social media, and aiming at maximizing the use of web app on sexual health. Objective: To analyze the impact of a Facebook fan page, Facebook advertisements, and posters to maximize the number of visits to the educational web app. Methods: The campaign is assessed f...

Background Nowadays, rapid and accessible participatory research on diabetes can be carried out using social media platforms. The objective of this study was to identify preferences and interests of diabetic social media users regarding a health-promotion intervention targeting them. Methods Social media followers of the Norwegian Diabetes Associa...

Background: Contents published on social media have an impact on individuals and on their decision-making. Knowing the sentiment towards diabetes is fundamental to understanding the impact that such information could have on people affected with this health condition and their family members. The objective of this study is to analyze the sentiment...

Background:: Contents published on social media have an impact on individuals and on their decision making. Knowing the sentiment toward diabetes is fundamental to understanding the impact that such information could have on people affected with this health condition and their family members. The objective of this study is to analyze the sentiment...

Background: Health authorities recommend educating diabetic patients and their families and initiating measures aimed at improving self-management, promoting a positive behavior change, and reducing the risk of complications. Social media could provide valid channel to intervene in and deliver diabetes education. However, it is not well known wheth...

Background: Participatory health approaches are increasingly drawing attention among the scientific community, and could be used for health promotion programmes on diabetes through social media. The main aim of this project is to research how to best use social media to promote healthy lifestyles with and within the Norwegian population. Methods:...

Background: Health authorities recommend educating diabetic patients and their families and initiating measures aimed at improving self-management, promoting a positive behavior change, and reducing the risk of complications. Social media could provide valid channel to intervene in and deliver diabetes education. However, it is not well known wheth...

Background: Mobile phone health apps are increasingly gaining attention in oncological care as potential tools for supporting cancer patients. Although the number of publications and health apps focusing on cancer is increasing, there are still few specifically designed for the most prevalent cancers diagnosed: breast and prostate cancers. There i...

Objectives The objectives of this thesis are to investigate the use of social media for health promotion dealing with sexually transmitted infections, their value for improving health and increasing the promotion reach, and to provide examples on how social media users retrieve information about sexually- transmitted infections from these media. I...

Background: The authors present a case study of a public health campaign, including social media, and aiming at maximizing the use of web app on sexual health. Objective: To analyze the impact of a Facebook fan page, Facebook advertisements, and posters to maximize the number of visits to the educational web app. Methods: The campaign is assessed f...

Although the use of games and gamification for health is a novel field, and more research is needed, there are a new series of publications with promising results in which it is shown that these tools can be beneficial for health. Scientific research, case studies, and the facilitator’s observations show that games and gamification have an effect o...

Social media provides online platforms for interactions around various health topics relating to patient education, health promotion, public relations, and crisis communication. An important aspect of social media for health communication is to provide valuable peer, social, and emotional support for the general public and patients. Patients can sh...

Conference abstract from European Telemedicine Conference 2016, Oslo 15-16 November. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: In order to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs), the World Health Organization recommends educating people on sexual health. With more than 2 billion active users worldwide, online social media potentially represent powerful channels for health promotion, including sexual health. Objective: To review the scientific literat...

Nowadays, the Internet and social media represent prime channels for health information seeking and peer support. However, benefits of health social media can be reduced by low digital health literacy. We designed a massive open online course (MOOC) course about health social media to increase the students' digital health literacy. In this course,...

Background: When a child is diagnosed with a food allergy, prevention and patient education are the key interventions for maintaining the child's health and quality of life and that of his or her whole family. However, health education activities for the families of children with food allergies are very limited, and most of these activities have n...

Studies have demonstrated that there are weekly patterns of information-seeking activities on sexual health topics in some selected languages. However, it is not known if this weekly pattern is found across the ten most commonly-used languages on the Internet, and whether international public events might have an impact on these information-seeking...

Background Online health information–seeking behaviors have been reported to be more common at the beginning of the workweek. This behavior pattern has been interpreted as a kind of “healthy new start” or “fresh start” due to regrets or attempts to compensate for unhealthy behavior or poor choices made during the weekend. However, the observations...

Social media, web and mobile technologies are increasingly used in healthcare and directly support patientcentered care. Patients benefit from disease self-management tools, contact to others, and closer monitoring. Researchers study drug efficiency, or recruit patients for clinical studies via these technologies. However, low communication barrier...

Knowing what the conversation on Twitter regarding type 1 diabetes (T1D) is about can help in understanding the kind of information relevant to the individuals affected by the disease. The profile of Twitter users posting on T1D was collected and classified. The number of re-tweets was also registered. The tweets posted by non-governmental organiza...

Recent articles have documented the influence of self-efficacy and social support on exercising. Simultaneously, insulin use is also related to the perception of self-efficacy and social support in patients with diabetes. We combine these two ideas through the Big Blue Test experience in a social networking site and propose to analyze whether a cha...

Chlamydia is the most common reportable sexually transmitted disease (STD) in Norway, and its incidence in the two northernmost counties has been disclosed to be nearly the double of the Norwegian average. The latest publicly available rates showed that 85.6% of the new cases were diagnosed in people under 29 years old. The information and communic...

Background: Online social media, such as the microblogging site Twitter, have become a space for speedy exchange of information regarding sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), presenting a potential risk environment for how STDs are portrayed. Examining the types of "tweeters" (users who post messages on Twitter) and the nature of "tweet" messages...

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted disease (STD) in Norway; and 85,7% of reported chlamydia cases are found in persons below 29 years of age. Methods:The web app sjekkdeg.no aims at providing information for Norwegian secondary school students about the prevention of STDs. The development of the app was based on a constructivist lear...

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and especially chlamydia is a worrying problem among North-Norwegian youngsters. Gamified web applications should be valued for sexual health education, and thus STDs prevention, for their potential to get users engaged and involved with their healthcare. Aiming to achieve that youngsters become more aware of ST...

Recent publications on YouTube have advocated its potential for patient education. However, a reliable description of what could be considered quality information for patient education on YouTube is missing. To identify topics associated with the concept of quality information for patient education on YouTube in the scientific literature. A literat...

Background Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), especially the Chlamydia trachomatis bacterial infection, a common cause of infertility, are highly prevalent in developed countries, and a worrying problem in North Norway, where the incidence of chlamydia twice the Norwegian average. Seventy percent of reported chlamydia cases are found in people b...

Recent literature has discussed the unintended consequences of clinical information technologies (IT) on patient safety, yet there has been little discussion about the safety concerns in the area of consumer health IT. This paper presents a range of safety concerns for consumers in social media, with a case study on YouTube. We conducted a scan of...