Developing a new method to measure daily steps through iPhone Health App and an internet survey: a case study of temporal changes of step counts before and after the declaration of a state of emergency against the epidemic of COVID-19 in Japan

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  • Adachi Hiroki M.
    Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University
  • Hanibuchi Tomoya
    Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University
  • Nagata Shohei
    Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University
  • Amagasa Shiho
    Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Tokyo Medical University
  • Inoue Shigeru
    Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Tokyo Medical University
  • Nakaya Tomoki
    Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University

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Other Title
  • iPhoneのヘルスケアアプリとインターネット調査を用いた歩数計測の新しい方法の開発：COVID-19流行に対する緊急事態宣言前後の歩数変化調査を事例に
  • iPhone ノ ヘルスケアアプリ ト インターネット チョウサ オ モチイタ ホスウ ケイソク ノ アタラシイ ホウホウ ノ カイハツ : COVID-19 リュウコウ ニ タイスル キンキュウ ジタイ センゲン ゼンゴ ノ ホスウ ヘンカ チョウサ オ ジレイ ニ

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<p>Objective: Apple Inc’s iPhone Health App automatically records daily steps of the iPhone users. We developed a method to obtain the recorded step counts from the screenshot images of Health App. We examined the practicality of the method through an Internet survey by which we intended to detect regional and demographic variations in the degree of step count drop under the declaration of a state of emergency against spreading of COVID-19.</p><p>Methods: A total of 1,200 daily iPhone users aged 20-69 years living in Japan among registered monitors of an Internet survey company were surveyed, resulting in screenshot images of iPhone Health App. We developed a program to read the daily numbers of steps from the screenshot images, and confirmed the changes in the average number of steps from February 19 to May 19, 2020.</p><p>Results: About 79.9% of the collected images were able to be used for the machine reading of daily step counts without errors. The causes of errors were examined for the improvement of the proposed methods. Using a fixed effects model, it was estimated that the average number of daily steps significantly decreased after the declaration of the state of emergency, and the observed tendency was consistent with previous studies in Tokyo. We also identified significant regional and age variations of step-count decrease. Largest drops of daily step count were observed for the group of aged 20-29 year-old living in three major metropolitan areas: average decrease of daily steps of men and women in the group were 2,712 and 2,663, respectively.</p><p>Conclusion: This study indicated that the newly developed method to automatically read the number of steps from screenshot images of iPhone collected through an Internet survey is an effective way to objectively and retrospectively measure temporal changes of step counts of people.</p>

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