About
47
Publications
25,176
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296
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Miriam Cabrita is a specialist in Personalized Digital Health solutions at Innovation Sprint, a start-up thriving to disrupt the delivery of hybrid clinical trials. Miriam has a background in Biomedical Engineering and concluded her PhD in 2017 at the University of Twente (the Netherlands) on personalization of mobile technologies for promotion of Active and Healthy Ageing.
Additional affiliations
March 2021 - present
Innovation Sprint
Position
- Researcher
May 2018 - December 2019
November 2013 - November 2017
Education
September 2011 - October 2013
September 2011 - July 2012
September 2008 - July 2011
Publications
Publications (47)
This paper presents a comprehensive and practical framework for automatic generation of real-time tailored messages in behavior change applications. Basic aspects of motivational messages are time, intention, content and presentation. Tailoring of messages to the individual user may involve all aspects of communication. A linear modular system is p...
The age of the population worldwide is rapidly increasing, bringing social and economic challenges. Persuasive technology can alleviate the burden on traditional healthcare services when used to support healthy behaviors, for instance in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. Additionally, healthy behaviors are key factors for active and...
Background: Prevention of functional decline demands a holistic perspective of health management. Older adults are becoming avid users of technology; however, technology is not yet largely used in supporting self-management of health in daily life. Previous research suggests that the low adherence to these technologies is likely to be associated wi...
Background:
Loss of a spouse is a frequent occurrence in later life. While most older adults successfully process this loss and will return to a normal life, about 10% of the individuals are unable to cope, and progress to prolonged grief (PG). PG, in turn, can result in mental and physical problems including poor sleep, cardiovascular problems, d...
An ever-increasing number of people need to cope with one or more chronic conditions for a significant portion of their life. Digital Therapeutics (DTx) focused on the prevention, management, or treatment of chronic diseases are promising in alleviating the personal socio-economic burden caused. In this paper we describe a proposed DTx methodology...
Aiming to illuminate the effects of enforced confinements on people's lives, this paper presents a novel dataset that measures human behaviour holistically and longitudinally during the COVID-19 outbreak. In particular, we conducted a study during the first wave of the lockdown, where 21 healthy subjects from the Netherlands and Greece participated...
Responding to the challenges of demographic change, a growing number of eHealth solutions are appearing on the market, aiming to enable age-friendly living and working environments. Pervasive sensing and monitoring of workers' health-, behavioural-, emotional- and cognitive status to support their health and workability enable the creation of adapt...
While much effort has been devoted to the development of mental e-health interventions, the tailoring of these applications to user characteristics and needs is a comparatively novel field of research. The premise of personalizing mental e-health interventions is that personalization increases user motivation and (thereby) mitigates intervention dr...
Background
The uptake of complex clinical decision support systems (CDSS) in daily practice remains low, despite the proven potential to reduce medical errors and to improve the quality of care. To improve successful implementation of a complex CDSS this study aims to identify the factors that hinder, or alleviate the acceptance of, clinicians towa...
Background: Most office workers were forced to work remotely due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, possibly leading to a reconfiguration of settled patterns of physical behavior, often characterized by a sedentary lifestyle. This study aimed to investigate the motivational profile, facilitators, and barriers that might have influenced a change in ph...
Background: The uptake of complex clinical decision support systems (CDSS) in daily practice remains low, despite the proven potential to reduce medical errors and to improve the quality of care. To improve successful implementation of a complex CDSS service, the aim of this study is to identify the factors that hinder or alleviate the acceptance o...
Background: Loss of a spouse is a frequent occurrence in later life, with about 10% of the individuals finding themselves unable to cope and progressing to prolonged grief, risking further mental and physical problems.
Objective: The development and implementation of an online grief program, such as LEAVES ( optimizing the menta L hEalth and resili...
Background
Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) are computerized systems using case-based reasoning to assist clinicians in making clinical decisions. Despite the proven added value to public health, the implementation of CDSS clinical practice is scarce. Particularly, little is known about the acceptance of CDSS among clinicians. Within the B...
BACKGROUND
Loss of a spouse is a frequent occurrence in later life. While most older adults successfully process this loss and will return to a normal life, about 10% of the individuals are unable to cope, and progress to prolonged grief. Prolonged grief, in turn, can result in mental and physical problems including, poor sleep, cardiovascular prob...
Background and objective:
Clinical guidelines recommend physical activity to manage neck pain (NP) and low back pain (LBP). However, studies used to support these guidelines are based on self-reports of physical behaviour which are prone to bias and misclassification. This systematic review aimed to investigate associations between objectively mea...
There is an alarming rise/increase of older people in EUs population, with an expected percentage of people over 65 at 30% by 2060, and the majority of older workers willing to work past their traditional retirement age. The concept of Work Ability, which has been developed as an important multi-factor concept that can be used to identify workers a...
Europe is being severely challenged by the ageing of the population, and although for well over a decade now is looking for strategies to effectively increase the labour force participation of older workers and reduce the rates of early retirement and labour market exit, the unemployment amongst older people remains particularly high. The design an...
Virtual Reality (VR) steht in erster Linie fur die nachste Revolution in der Unterhaltungsindustrie, dabei geniesen seriose VR-Applikationen in gesundheitsbezogenen Anwendungsgebieten bisher nur in Fachkreisen Aufmerksamkeit. Verschiedene Studien legen jedoch nahe, dass es sich bei VR keineswegs nur um eine technische Spielerei handelt, sondern VR-...
Background
Patients with Neck and/or Low Back Pain (NLBP) constitute a heterogeneous group with the prognosis and precise mix of factors involved varying substantially between individuals. This means that a one-size-fits-all approach is not recommended, but methods to tailor treatment to the individual needs are still relatively under-developed. Mo...
As society ages, healthcare systems are preparing for an increasing prevalence of frail, co-morbid and older community-dwellers at risk of adverse outcomes including falls, malnutrition, hospitalisation, institutionalisation and death. Early intervention is desirable and pre-frailty, before onset of functional decline, may represent a suitable tran...
Background:
Prevention of functional decline demands a holistic perspective of health management. Older adults are becoming avid users of technology; however, technology is not yet largely used in supporting self-management of health in daily life. Previous research suggests that the low adherence to these technologies is likely to be associated w...
BACKGROUND
Prevention of functional decline demands a holistic perspective of health management. Older adults are becoming avid users of technology; however, technology is not yet largely used in supporting self-management of health in daily life. Previous research suggests that the low adherence to these technologies is likely to be associated wit...
Background
Pleasure is one determinant of intrinsic motivation and yet a dimension often forgotten when promoting physical activity among the older population. In this study we investigate the relation between daily activities and physical activity, experience of pleasure, and the interaction between pleasure and physical activity in the daily live...
Gamified environments in Virtual Reality (VR) have shown promising results for acute pain and behavioral health. The potential for rehabilitation of chronic pain has yet to be explored. In this paper, we present a Virtual Reality game to improve the training of chronic pain both in the clinical and home settings. The prototype was designed in stron...
BACKGROUND: Asthma is the most common chronic lung disease in childhood. The large majority (70-90%) of asthmatic children is affected by exercise-induced asthma which deters children from participating in regular physical activity or leads to dropping out of play and sports. Children with asthma should be encouraged to exercise, as physical activi...
Older adults are not reaching the recommended guidelines for physical activity. There is growing evidence that physical activity and positive emotions reinforce each other. However, the development of interventions leveraging this knowledge faces several challenges, such as the limited knowledge on the assessment of emotional wellbeing in daily lif...
In the face of demographic ageing European healthcare providers and policy makers are recognising an increasing prevalence of frail, community-dwelling older adults, prone to adverse healthcare outcomes. Pre-frailty, before onset of functional decline, is suggested to be reversible but interventions targeting this risk syndrome are limited. No cons...
BACKGROUND: Asthma is the most common chronic disease in childhood. The large majority (70-90%) of asthmatic children is affected by exercise-induced asthma which can deter them from participating in regular physical activity or lead to dropping out of play and sports. Inactivity reduces physical fitness, isolates children, and induces asthma sympt...
Children with exercise-induced asthma face several challenges in their daily life, which can improve by proper self-management practices. AIRplay combines biomedical sensing with gamified environments to improve physical conditioning and self-management of asthma among children aged 7 to 9 years old. The goal is to develop a proof-of-concept of coa...
Introduction: Mobile technologies facilitate innovative and ubiquitous interventions to promote Active Ageing in daily life. To ensure adoption, such interventions must be designed in co-operation with older adults. This work presents the results of a feasibility study of a system that monitors physical activity, well-being and weight of community-...
Objectives: Literature suggests that positive emotions positively influence physiological parameters but their relation to functioning in the daily life of older adults living independently remains unclear. The present work aims to investigate the relation between positive emotions and functional status in daily life of older people living independ...
The ability to perform ADL seems to predict experience of positive emotions at follow-up and also, the experience of positive emotions seems to delay functional decline, in accordance with what is expected by the ‘upward spiral of positive emotions’ proposed by Fredrickson & Joiner (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002). However, caution should be taken when...
An active lifestyle is of utmost importance for the quality of life of the older adults. With active lifestyle is meant not only physically active, but also engaged with the social environment. Although some individuals can achieve a desired level of physical activity and engagement by themselves, others seem to be in need of an external motivation...
The Aging phenomenon entails increased costs to health care systems worldwide. Prevention and self-management of age-related conditions receive high priority in public health research. Multidimensionality of impairments should be considered when designing interventions targeting the older population. Detection of slow or fast changes in daily funct...
This article addresses the design and implementation of user interaction concepts for smart caring homes. Elderly suffering from age related frailty or chronic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and mild dementia are the targeted primary users. Their informal and formal caregivers are regarded as secondary users. The current sm...
Experience sampling and physical activity measurements to improve workday satisfaction.
S.T. Boerema (RRD), M. Evers (RRD), M. Cabrita (RRD), M. Vollenbroek (RRD), H. Hermens (UT)
INTRODUCTION. In our western aging society, retirement ages are rising, resulting in a substantial and growing number of older workers with specific needs. Workplaces sh...
There is now an emerging view of health care as a sector of the economy. The subject is increasingly gaining the interest of policy makers and health care industry researchers as a way of modifying the incidence and impact of unhealthy behavior and disease. Health-related social marketing is the systematic application of commercial marketing princi...
Active Aging deals with the support and integration of the elderly population in a society focusing on improving physical and mental well-being. Persuasive technology provides solutions for tailored interventions aiming at maintaining an active lifestyle. The present paper introduces the initial ideas of a PhD trajectory that proposes to design and...
Healthcare is experiencing a significant growth in the scientific understanding and practical approach of diseases, care pathways, treatments and clinical decisions. However, the literature reveals that this exponential growth of knowledge is not consistent with the users’ ability to effectively disseminate, transfer and apply healthcare knowledge...
There is now an emerging view of health care as a sector of the economy. The subject is increasingly gaining the interest of policy makers and health care industry researchers as a way of modifying the incidence and impact of unhealthy behavior and disease. Health-related social marketing is the systematic application of commercial marketing princi...
The ageing population and the increase in sedentary lifestyles of knowledge workers has led to increasing concerns about the physical activity habits of the European population. Pervasive technologies and theories of behavioral change are being combined in an effort to promote physical activity. The Activity Coach is an ex-ample of one such system....
Technology supported services for achieving a healthy lifestyle have shown their short term effects and are receiving increasing interest from the research community. However, long term adherence to these services is poor. This paper describes research-in-progress regarding the implementation of automated goal-setting and tailored feedback messages...
Questions
Question (1)
I am conducting a research focused on the promotion of Active Aging using ICT. One of my points of research is the role of Positive Psychology in such interventions. Does anyone know any studies related to this topic (behind most current topics as self-efficacy and optimism)? And what are the determinants of success/failure in interventions aiming at behavior change based on constructs of Positive Psychology? Thanks for any help.
Projects
Projects (7)
The SmartWork project (EU H2020: SC1-DTH-03-2018, GA 826343) aims at building a Worker-Centric AI System for work ability sustainability for office workers, which integrates unobtrusive sensing and modelling of the worker state with a suite of novel services for context and worker-aware adaptive work support. The unobtrusive and pervasive monitoring of health, behaviour, cognitive and emotional status of the worker enables the functional and cognitive decline risk assessment. The holistic approach for work ability modelling captures the attitudes and abilities of the ageing worker and enables decision support for personalized interventions for maintenance/improvement of the work ability. The evolving work requirements are translated into required abilities and capabilities (i.e. work ability model), and the adaptive work environment supports the older office worker with optimized services for on-the-fly work flexibility coordination, seamless transfer of the work environment between different devices and different environments (e.g. at home, at the office, or on the move), and on-demand personalized training. The SmartWork services and modules, shown in Figure 1, for on-the-fly work flexibility also empower the employer (manager) with AI decision support tools for efficient task completion and work team optimization through flexible work practices. Formal/informal carers are enabled to continuously monitor the overall health status, behavioural attitudes and risks for the people they care for, and adapt health and lifestyle interventions to the evolving workers status, thus providing full support to the older office workers for sustainable, active and healthy ageing.
The overall objective of HOLOBALANCE is to develop and validate a new personalized hologram coach platform for virtual coaching, motivation and empowerment of the ageing population with balance disorders.
