E/Balance™

A Tool for Real-Time Energy Balance Research

This NCI-funded contract-supported development of a prototype portable energy balance assessment and intervention tool for real-time data capture and feedback. It was built around a cell phone client and a Web-based server, to meet the needs of researchers engaged in individual-level cognitive and behavioral intervention research and active living and food environment (ecological) research. E/Balance utilized smart phones and the Alive™ heart rate monitor and accelerometer for mobile data collection.

This platform and software has been subjected to rigorous usability, acceptability, reliability, and validity testing. The resulting product supports self-report and objective measurement of individual-level energy balance data (e.g., physical activity, heart rate, sedentary behavior, dietary intake, and psychosocial data). Environment-based data collection and intervention capabilities have also been demonstrated, using global positioning system (GPS) data that can be matched to geographical information system (GIS) data for purposes of environmental tracking and prompting. Other demonstrated capabilities include camera phone capture of packaged food bar codes and interpretation of such codes (which can then be cross-referenced to nutritional databases), and automated uploading of captured food images for online dietary recall.

Product brochure :

E/Balance Brochure

Contact Santech to learn more about how E/Balance can streamline and improve the quality of your energy intake/expenditure data collection and intervention efforts.