Evaluating Connected Health Approaches to Improve the Health of Veterans

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of hospitalization, morbidity, and mortality among veterans. Many of the contributing risk factors are health behaviors that occur outside of the health care system and within their everyday lives of veterans such as physical activity, obesity, smoking, and medication adherence. Connected health is a model for using mobile technologies to remotely monitor health outcomes and deploy interventions to change behavior.

Research objectives: 1) Understand veterans’ perspectives of needs, barriers, and opportunities with connected health devices; 2) Evaluate veteran’s experiences with Way to Health, a technology platform already being used at the CMCVAMC in Philadelphia to integrate connected health devices and enable automated deployment of behavioral economic interventions; 3) Use Way to Health to test social and financial incentive-based connected health approaches to increase physical activity among veterans to inform an investigator-initiated research proposal.