Using mHealth Technologies to Promote Public Health and Well-Being in Urban Areas with Blue-Green Solutions.

European and International cities face crucial global geopolitical, economic, environmental, and other changes. All these intensify threats to and inequalities in citizens' health. The implementation of Blue-Green Solutions in urban and rural areas have been broadly used to tackle the above challenges. The Mobile health (mHealth) technologies contribution in people's well-being has found to be significant. In addition, several mHealth applications have been used to support patients with mental health or cardiovascular diseases with very promising results. The patients' remote monitoring can be a valuable asset in chronic diseases management for patients suffering from diabetes, hypertension or arrhythmia, depression, asthma, allergies and others. The scope of this paper is to present the specifications, the design and the development of a mobile application which collects health-related and location data of users visiting areas with Blue-Green Solutions. The mobile application has been developed to record the citizens' and patients' physical activity and vital signs using wearable devices. The proposed application can also monitor patients physical, physiological, and emotional status as well as motivate them to engage in social and self-caring activities. Additional features include the analysis of the patients' behavior to improve self-management. The "HEART by BioAsssist" application could be used as a health and other data collection tool as well as an "intelligent assistant" to monitor and promote patient's physical activity.

Pervasive Monitoring of Public Health and Well-Being in Urban Areas with Blue-Green Solutions.

The urban environment seems to affect the citizens' health. The implementation of Blue-Green Solutions (BGS) in urban areas have been used to promote public health and citizens well-being. The aim of this paper is to present the development of an mHealth app for monitoring patients and citizens health status in areas where BGS will be applied. The "HEART by BioAsssist" application could be used as a health and other data collection tool as well as an "intelligent assistant" to monitor and promote patient's physical activity in areas with Blue-Green Solutions.

Schema therapy for patients with chronic depression: a single case series study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This study tested the effectiveness of schema therapy (ST) for patients with chronic depression. METHODS: Twelve patients with a diagnosis of chronic depression participated. The treatment protocol consisted of 60 sessions, with the first 55 sessions offered weekly and the last five sessions on a biweekly basis. A single case series A-B-C design, with 6 months follow-up was used. Baseline (A) was a wait period of 8 weeks. Baseline was followed by introduction to ST and bonding to therapist (phase B) with individually tailored length of 12-16 sessions, after which further ST was provided (phase C) up to 60 sessions (included the sessions given as introduction). Patients were assessed with Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression three times during baseline, at the end of phase B, then every 12 weeks until the end of treatment and at 6 months follow-up. Secondary outcome measures were the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety and the Young Schema Questionnaire. RESULTS: At the end of treatment 7 patients (approximately 60%) remitted or satisfactorily responded. The mean HRSD dropped from 21.07 during baseline to 9.40 at post-treatment and 10.75 at follow-up. The effects were large and the gains of treatment were maintained at 6-month follow-up. Only one patient dropped out for reasons not related to treatment. LIMITATIONS: The lack of control group, the small sample and the lack of a multiple baseline case series. CONCLUSIONS: This preliminary study supports the use of ST as an effective treatment for chronic depression.