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As reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), malnutrition is a health problem faced by many nations around the world. In Mexico around 50% of adult population is obese; this in turn situates people on risk of contracting other diseases such as diabetes, and hypertension. To address this problem, one of the main institutes of health in Mexico has implemented a program for preventing diseases related to bad feeding and physical activity habits. In our aim to provide a technological solution to help people with such problems, we conducted a field study around this program to envision and inform our design. We propose a Virtual Specialist (VS) that stays with the patient and advice him at all times on issues related to keeping diet and exercise programs. We argue that patients that use this solution would feel more motivated to keep working on their programs, since they get a feeling of being personally attended.
Silva et al. (Fri,) studied this question.