NFC as a Childhood Obesity Treatment Tool

Abstract

Childhood Obesity is associated with a wide range of serious health complications and constitutes an increased risk of premature syndromes, including diabetes or heart diseases. Its treatment seems to be complicated. So, in order to help parents we have developed a system that will try to make easier the process of choosing foodstuff for overweight and obese children at the supermarket. To interact with the system, Near Field Communication mobile phones and tags are used. Those tags would have nutritional information such as energy or fat contain of each product. When the interaction takes place, the system will generate an alert determining if the product is adequate for the user diet or not. Decision will be influenced by specific prescript diets, which would have been previously generated by the system based on user profile parameters. At the same time the diet is established, the shopping list would be generated automatically. Therefore, the user could download and print both things at home easily by the PC application. The system also takes into account physical activity of the user. Children mobile phone includes an accelerometer that will detect and collect user activities in order to modify calorical requirements and, if necessary, to change physical activity too. In the future, it would be possible to extend this project system for adults, managing diets not just for obese and overweight, but also to diabetic or celiac people.