A virtual coaching platform to support therapy compliance in obesity

Obesity is a real health emergency with significant consequences for individuals and society, reducing expectations and quality of life or even the death for 2.8 million people each year. Being a chronic condition with limited pharmacological options, weight loss therapies are mainly based on dietary and cognitive-behavioral interventions delivered at specialist public and/or private centers. In order to promote and facilitate weight loss, this paper proposes a virtual coaching system to motivate and guide the patients during the therapy and to support the clinicians in monitoring its effectiveness. The system has three components: a) the clinician's web application, which is used to monitor and modify the therapy for each patient; b) a mobile application for patients, used to log nutrition intakes and physical activities, and to consult motivational documents/videos; and c) a cloud server, which collects data and implements smart monitoring features. The platform is adopted in a clinical trial involving 120 patients with obesity (Body Mass Index >= 30) that has recently started.