Using a Transdisciplinary Approach in Learning Communities for Designing Wearable Stress Management for Vulnerable Populations: ... 2026 Peeters et al

[Andy]

Full title: Using a Transdisciplinary Approach in Learning Communities for Designing Wearable Stress Management for Vulnerable Populations: Development and Usability Study

Abstract​

Background:Software solutions for wearable-based stress monitoring offer significant potential in health care, particularly for vulnerable populations such as individuals with dementia or persistent physical symptoms. Despite technological advances, designing user-centered, ethically grounded, and contextually relevant software remains challenging. Vulnerable populations often have specific cognitive, physical, and emotional needs that require customization, yet these are rarely prioritized in mainstream development. Our so-called Sensors2Care project addressed these challenges by co-developing stress-monitoring prototypes in collaboration with stakeholders from health care, law, and technology within a transdisciplinary setting.

Objective:This article has two aims: first, to describe how the Sensors2Care project operationalized the transdisciplinary approach (TDA) within a learning community (LC) to guide the development of stress-monitoring software; second, to share stakeholder needs and design requirements for wearable technologies in complex health care contexts, derived from this process.

Methods:The Sensors2Care project applied a TDA embedded in an LC. This approach combined participatory design research with mixed methods across 3 iterative components: requirements gathering, prototype development, and early-stage evaluation. Research activities included scoping reviews, semistructured interviews, focus groups, legal analyses, and field testing. In the LC, students and researchers from health professions, computer science, and law collaborated with patients, (in)formal caregivers, and industry partners in a transdisciplinary consortium. User stories served as both a methodological tool and design outcome, helping to capture stakeholder needs and align input from technical, health, and legal domains. Feedback was collected continuously and used to refine requirements and prototypes throughout the development process.

Results:User stories revealed 7 key themes relevant to developing and using wearable-based stress monitoring, including strategic use, notifications, user input, data insight, data access and sharing, hardware design, and support. Stakeholders emphasized the need for customization, durability, and comfort, aligned with the cognitive and physical needs of the target populations. Prototype evaluations indicated the practical relevance of these features and revealed a need for training and insight into long-term usability. Beyond their role in capturing content-driven input, user stories also supported transdisciplinary collaboration by aligning legal, health, technical, and experiential perspectives. This was facilitated by the LC structure, which enabled sustained engagement between students, researchers, and societal stakeholders and illustrated the feasibility of implementing TDA in a university context.

Conclusions:This project illustrates how TDA, when embedded in an LC, supports the co-development of ethically grounded, contextually relevant, and practically applicable stress-monitoring software for vulnerable populations. The iterative design process enabled early integration of legal, health, and technical considerations, while user stories supported structured collaboration across domains. Although the project resulted in concrete prototypes and clustered design requirements, further research is needed to assess long-term use and real-world implementation across health care contexts. Embedding TDA in LCs may strengthen future professionals’ ability to address complex health care challenges collaboratively.

Open access

 

[Andy]

Sensors2Care Project​

Designing wearables for stress monitoring involves making choices that need to balance technical possibilities with contextual requirements. Studying multiple use cases helps to distinguish context-specific from general requirements, strengthening the relevance of resulting design insights. Early identification and monitoring of stress are particularly beneficial for persons with various health conditions [2,10], highlighting the relevance of examining multiple contexts. The Sensors2care project, therefore, focused on 2 health care use cases: dementia and persistent physical symptoms (PPS).

Dementia is often associated with challenging behaviors [11] like anxiety and agitation, influenced by underlying stress [12,13]. These behaviors can negatively impact the quality of life of individuals and place a heavy burden on caregivers [14-16]. The other use case, PPS, includes distressing somatic complaints, such as pain and fatigue, that last several months or more, regardless of their cause. These symptoms occur in the context of somatic diseases, functional somatic disorders, mental disorders, and undiagnosed conditions and are a core problem in a wide range of medical disciplines [17]. PPS is characterized by a close interplay between symptoms and stress regulation: difficulties in perceiving bodily signals [18], regulating emotions [19,20], and maintaining autonomic balance [21] may exacerbate stress responses, which in turn can worsen symptoms [22]. These symptoms often limit daily functioning and create a substantial burden for patients and health care providers. In both use cases, PPS and dementia, stress management is already part of usual care [23,24], as timely stress identification can support tailored interventions, improve well-being, and reduce care burden.

 

[rvallee]

There is merit to some of this, there are obstacles to wearables that usually aren't considered, but it veers off track with trying to make this about stress, a word that probably has more meanings than the word thing, and doesn't really apply for the most part unless stress explicitly means exertion, which makes sense, but is significantly made less useful by misusing a term that has been co-opted for ideological reasons to produce bad faith nonsense.

PPS is characterized by a close interplay between symptoms and stress regulation: difficulties in perceiving bodily signals [18], regulating emotions [19,20], and maintaining autonomic balance [21] may exacerbate stress responses, which in turn can worsen symptoms [22].

Like this. What does stress even mean in this context? And this is just a speculative model, it's not based on facts. And what is 'stress regulation'? All I find from searching this is mindfulness woo. Most alternative medicine based on pseudoscience tries to be more internally coherent than this, and none of them achieve it, let alone external coherence.

Also the paper reads like it was written by a committee of people who tried to cram all the marketing buzzwords for no other reason than to be sure to include all of them. I don't know why they mixed the challenge of meeting design goals for a wearable with the rest of the mind-body stuff, it doesn't make sense outside of trying to sell this as a product, which is likely the case.

 

[Trish]

I like the idea of more accessible and usable wearables for sick people.

Spoiler: A barely relevant personal anecdote

My fitbit gave me a laugh today - it said one of my 5 overnight health metrics was outside my normal range. Turned out it was my SpO2 blood oxygen measured at 100%, and my normal range is 94 to 99%. So nothing to worry about then. Why that seemed funny I have no idea, but I'll take my laughs where I get them.

Seriously, I find the most useful metrics from my fitbit are my daily steps, which go down obviously when I'm crashed and remind me when I'm doing too much, and my resting heart rate which is higher when over exerting or heading into a crash and can be a useful warning.