Preventing obesity and eating disorders through behavioural modifications: the SPLENDID vision

Recent intensive research in the fields of obesity and eating disorders has proved most traditional interventions inadequate: The obesity-targeting interventions have either failed or are strongly social context dependent, while the interventions for eating disorders have poor results and high levels of relapse. On the contrary, recent randomized control trials have illustrated that supervised training of patients to eat and move in a non-pathological way is effective in the prevention of both obesity and eating disorders. Applying the same kind of methodologies to the general population in real life conditions for prevention purposes comes as the logical next step. SPLENDID is a recently initiated EU-funded collaborative project that intends to develop a personalised guidance system for helping and training children and young adults to improve their eating and activity behaviour. By combining expertise in behavioural patterns with current advancements in intelligent systems and sensor technologies, SPLENDID is going to detect subjects at risk for developing obesity or eating disorders and offer them enhanced monitoring and guidance to prevent further disease progression. Both behavioural data collection and system evaluation are going to be performed via pilot studies supported by expert health professionals.