The Healthy Environments and Active Living for Translational Health (HEALTH) Platform: A smartphone-based platform for geographic ecological momentary assessment research

Smartphones are an increasingly popular delivery mechanism for digital health interventions and observational research. Many digital health studies adopt an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology, which can be extended by incorporating the collection of participant location data via embedded technology within smartphones. However, there is currently a lack of customizable, geographically appropriate software for researchers to implement geographically explicit EMA (GEMA). To address this gap, we developed the Healthy Environments and Active Living for Translational Health (HEALTH) Platform. The HEALTH Platform is a customizable smartphone application that enables researchers to deliver GEMA prompts on a smartphone in real-time based on spatially complex geofence boundaries, collect audiovisual data, and flexibly adjust system logic without the need for time-consuming updates to the application on a participant’s device. We illustrate the HEALTH Platform’s capabilities through a study of park exposure and well-being. This study demonstrates the HEALTH Platform’s improvements upon existing GEMA software platforms. We observed survey prompt adherence is associated with participant motivation and the complexity of the survey instrument itself, following past EMA research findings. Overall, we find that the HEALTH Platform is a flexible mobile phone application for implementing the GEMA methodology in digital health research and practice and can be used to meet critical quality standards in this rapidly evolving field.