SMART INFORMATION FLOW TECHNOLOGIES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: DHP14-003

Description

NAPP (Nighttime Alleviation Play & Practice) is a mHealth gaming application designed to address the gap between good intentions and actual behavioral outcomes with regard to sleep hygiene. Insomnia is a widespread problem that has many serious psychological, social and economic consequences. Sleep hygiene is an effective way to improve insomnia and refers to a specific set of behaviors related to sleep. The implementation of sleep hygiene rules needs to address individual needs, health, social and environmental demands and lifestyle choices which lead to bad sleep habits. NAPP can achieve this by integrating sensor and subjective information from the phone directly into a game, designed to address individual needs. However, without increasing self-efficacy and motivation, changes to behaviors impacting sleep are unlikely. NAPP provides a gaming environment that targets underlying problems of bad sleep hygiene: 1) Breaking of bad habits by unconscious and experiential learning of sleep hygiene behaviors taking individual contexts into consideration, 2) Increase of self-regulation by delegating control of goal-directed responses to situational cues, 3) Motivation via personalization of gaming app, taking long-term patterns of behavior and environments into consideration, 4) Integration of sensor information into gaming app, 5) Increased goal achievement with heightened attained self-efficacy through repeated use of NAPP game. The concept design of NAPP takes evidence-based research theories like Implementation Intentions, the Health Action Process Approach, self-regulatory strategies, experiential gaming and learning or gaming mechanics of great games into consideration. This way, NAPP will not only acquire and integrate metrics over longer periods of time, but it will ensure that intended goals are actually achieved.