Marcia Nißen

• Ph.D.
• Postdoc at ETH Zurich

A new generation of patient-driven healthcare information systems (HIS) is emerging to advance traditional healthcare services and empower patient self-responsibility. Pro-fessional approaches to develop or improve HIS exist alongside evolving individual and community-shared approaches where patients take responsibility for their health data and he...

Smartphones promise great potential for personality science to study people's everyday life behaviours. Even though personality psychologists have become increasingly interested in the study of personality states, associations between smartphone data and personality states have not yet been investigated. This study provides a first step towards und...

Users interact with chatbots for various purposes and motivations – and for different periods of time. However, since chatbots are considered social actors and given that time is an essential component of social interactions, the question arises as to how chatbots need to be designed depending on whether they aim to help individuals achieve short-,...

Background: Conversational agents (CAs) are a novel approach to delivering digital health interventions. In human interactions, terms of address often change depending on the context or relationship between interlocutors. In many languages, this encompasses T/V distinction—formal and informal forms of the second-person pronoun “You”—that conveys di...

Background: The working alliance refers to an important relationship quality between health professionals and clients that robustly links to treatment success. Recent research shows that clients can develop an affective bond with chatbots. However, few research studies have investigated whether this perceived relationship is affected by the social...

Introduction Healthcare systems around the world exhibit inherent systemic inequities that disproportionately impact marginalised populations. Digital health technologies (DHTs) hold promising potential to address these inequities and to play a pivotal role in advancing health equity. However, there is a notable gap regarding a comprehensive and st...

Menstruating individuals experience various physiological and psychological changes throughout their reproductive lives and each menstrual cycle. Although numerous menstrual health tracking apps, exist, there is limited research on the impact of customization options and personalized visualizations of menstrual cycle data and associated symptoms on...

Hormonal changes in the female body function much like an underlying operating system on a computer – constantly running in the background, influencing every aspect of operation, often unnoticed yet crucially impactful. Hormonal dynamics over the life course such as those associated with the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, or the menopausal transition...

Menstruating individuals experience various physiological and psychological changes throughout their reproductive lives and each menstrual cycle (MC). Although numerous digital health technologies (DHTs), such as menstrual health (MH) tracking apps, exist, there is limited research on how customization options and personalized visualizations of MC...

BACKGROUND Digital health technologies (DHTs) have received increasing attention over the last decade, showcasing novel opportunities for the healthcare industry. This period has attracted substantial investment and revealed the challenges companies face in maintaining growth. However, to our knowledge, a systematic overview of the factors that dri...

Background Over the past decade, digital health technologies (DHTs) have grown rapidly, driven by innovations such as electronic health records and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Increased funding and regulatory support have further pushed the sector’s expansion. Despite early success, many DHT companies struggle to scale, with notable examp...

Background The healthcare industry is undergoing rapid transformation and progress, fueled by technological advances and the growing need for accessible, affordable, and high-quality healthcare services. While there has been significant progress in digitizing healthcare, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still considerable untapped...

Background and objective Dementia prevention has been recognized as a top priority by public health authorities due to the lack of disease modifying treatments. In this regard, digital dementia-preventive lifestyle services (DDLS) emerge as potentially pivotal services, aiming to address modifiable risk factors on a large scale. This study aims to...

Voice assistants (VAs) are increasingly integrated into everyday activities and tasks, raising novel challenges for users and researchers. One emergent research direction concerns proactive VAs, who can initiate interaction without direct user input, offering unique benefits including efficiency and natural interaction. Yet, there is a lack of revi...

Background Digital assistive technologies (DATs) have emerged as promising tools to support the daily life of people with dementia (PWD). Current research tends to concentrate either on specific categories of DATs or provide a generic view. Therefore, it is of essence to provide a review of different kinds of DATs and how they contribute to improvi...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for 73% of the global mortality in 2017, with an estimated financial impact of up to US$ 47 trillion by 2030. This escalating prevalence poses a significant challenge to healthcare systems and insurers, particularly in the context of an aging population with multiple NCDs. Digital health technologies (DHTs)...

Background: Digital assistive technologies (DATs) have emerged as promising tools to support the daily life of people with dementia (PWD) by offering support in various aspects of daily life. Quality of life (QOL) is an important consideration when discussing the care of PWD in relation to their autonomy. Current research tends to concentrate eithe...

BACKGROUND The working alliance refers to an important relationship quality between health professionals and clients that robustly links to treatment success. Recent research shows that clients can develop an affective bond with chatbots. However, few research studies have investigated whether this perceived relationship is affected by the social r...

Background: This protocol describes a study that will test the effectiveness of a 10-week non-clinical psychological coaching intervention for intentional personality change using a smartphone application. The goal of the intervention is to coach individuals who are willing and motivated to change some aspects of their personality, i.e., the Big Fi...

Working alliance describes an important relationship quality between health professionals and patients and is robustly linked to treatment success. However, due to limited resources of health professionals, working alliance cannot always be promoted just-in-time in a ubiquitous fashion. To address this scalability problem, we investigate the direct...

Biofeedback-based Breathing Trainings (BBTs) shows significant effect on health (WAN10, DIL16). State-of-the-art BBTs require dedicated (high cost) hardware and health professionals which represent a significant barrier to their widespread adoption. While It has been shown that a smartphone microphone has the ability to record audio signals from ex...

Health professionals have limited resources and are not able to personally monitor and support patients in their everyday life. Against this background and due to the increasing number of self-service channels and digital health interventions, we investigate how text-based healthcare chatbots (THCB) can be designed to effectively support patients a...

Asthma, diabetes, hypertension, or major depression are non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and impose a major burden on global health. Stress is linked to both the causes and consequences of NCDs and it has been shown that biofeedback-based breathing trainings (BBTs) are effective in coping with stress. Here, diaphragmatic breathing, i.e. deep abdomi...