DyMand: An Open-Source Mobile and Wearable System for Assessing Couples’ Dyadic Management of Chronic Diseases

Abstract

Married adults share illness management with spouses and it involves social support and common dyadic coping (CDC). Social support and CDC have an impact on health behavior and well-being or emotions in couples dyadic management of diabetes in daily life. Hence, understanding dyadic interactions in-situ in chronic disease management could inform behavioral interventions to help the dyadic management of chronic diseases. It is however not clear how well social support and CDC can be assesed in daily life among couples who are managing chronic diseases. In this work, we describe the development of DyMand, a novel open-source mobile and wearable system for ambulatory assessment of couples dyadic management of chronic diseases. Our first prototype is used in the context of diabetes mellitus Type II. Additionally, we describe our experience deploying the prototype in two pre-pilot tests with ve subjects and our plans for future deployments.