News: Teamscope joins StudyPages π
Read moreStarting from scratch is a risky move β this time it paid off.
Dear Diary,
I have been struggling with an eating disorder for the past few years. I am afraid to eat and afraid I will gain weight. The fear is unjustified as I was never overweight. I have weighed the same since I was 12 years old, and I am currently nearing my 25th birthday. Yet, when I see my reflection, I see somebody who is much larger than reality.
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I told my therapist that I thought I was fat. She said it was 'body dysmorphia'.
She explained this as a mental health condition where a person is apprehensive about their appearance and suggested I visit a nutritionist. She also told me that this condition was associated with other anxiety disorders and eating disorders. I did not understand what she was saying as I was in denial; I had a problem, to begin with. I wanted a solution without having to address my issues.
Upon visiting my nutritionist, he conducted an in-body scan and told me my body weight was dangerously low.
I disagreed with him.
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I felt he was speaking about a different person than the person I saw in the mirror. I felt like the elephant in the room- both literally and figuratively. He then made the simple but revolutionary suggestion to keep a food diary to track what I was eating.
This was a clever way for my nutritionist and me to be on the same page. By recording all my meals, drinks, and snacks, I was able to see what I was eating versus what I was supposed to be eating. Keeping a meal diary was a powerful and non-invasive way for my nutritionist to walk in my shoes for a specific time and understand my eating (and thinking) habits.
No other methodology would have allowed my nutritionist to capture so much contextual and behavioural information on my eating patterns other than a daily detailed food diary.
However, by using a paper and pen, I often forgot (or intentionally did not enter my food entries) as I felt guilty reading what I had eaten or that I had eaten at all.
I also did not have the visual flexibility to express myself through using photos, videos, voice recordings, and screen recordings. The usage of multiple media sources would have allowed my nutritionist to observe my behaviour in real-time and gain a holistic view of my physical and emotional needs.
I confessed to my therapist my deliberate dishonesty in completing the physical food diary and why I had been reluctant to participate in the exercise. My therapist then suggested to my nutritionist and me to transition to a mobile diary study.
Whilst I used a physical diary (paper and pen), a mobile diary study app would have helped my nutritionist and me reach a common ground (and to be on the same page) sooner rather than later.
As a millennial, I wanted to feel like journaling was as easy as Tweeting or posting a picture on Instagram. But at the same time, I wanted to know that the information I Β provided in a digital diary would be as safe and private as it would have been as my handwritten diary locked in my bedroom cabinet.
Further, a digital food diary study platform with push notifications would have served as a constant reminder to log in my food entries as I constantly check my phone. It would have also made the task of writing a food diary less momentous by transforming my journaling into micro-journaling by allowing me to enter one bite at a time rather than the whole day's worth of meals at once.
Mainly, the digital food diary could help collect the evidence that I was not the elephant in the room, but rather that the elephant in the room was my denied eating disorder.
Sincerely,
The elephant in the room
After weeks of hard work we have shipped our brand new Android app. In this release we decided to rebuild from the ground up our native Android application. The result is a fresh new product, with a polished user experience and world-class security.
Before I go any further, I would like to pay tribute to the team behind this new product: Parag Pawar, Shahroz Ali and Khaled Qasem. Well done guys! π
In this post IΒ will give you an overview of why we choose to build a new app from scratch instead of improving the old one, the main highlights of this new app and what we will be working on in the coming months.
To download this new app open search for "Teamscope" on the Google Play store or go to the following link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teamscopeapp
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Our old Android app was first build in 2015 and had improvements done until 2018. It was native app written in Java and it used the best practices of the time. Since then, the Android ecosystem has rapidly evolved and many of the libraries we had used then were no longer supported or updated.
This year when we decided to invest in improving our Android app we faced a challenge: make updates to our existing Android app or start from scratch and benefit from the latest conventions and libraries. We choose to totally rewrite the app and decided that for this project to make sense, within 3 months we should have a new app out. We ended up cutting that time in half.
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The second major decision we faced after concluding that the best thing was to re-write our current Android app was whether to build a native app for Android or a hybrid app which would work on Android and iOS β potentially allowing us to have a single app for both operating systems.
Building a native mobile app means redoing the work for each platform. On the other hand, when going the hybrid approach (with a technology such as React Native or Xamarin) you get the benefit of sharing a large amount of the code base and only requiring minor changes for Android and iOS. All things considered, our philosophy at Teamscope has been to build native products. The reason for this is a combination of two factors:
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Building native iOS and Android is something that we feel very comfortable with. This does mean that we need dedicated developers for each platform (iOS and Android), but we also enrich ourselves with the platform-specific knowledge that our iOS and Android developers can bring to the team.
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Your forms on Teamscope can be as complex as you want them to be: they can have hundreds of fields with complex branching and formulas with them. Although a native app is not by default faster or smoother than a hybrid app, we feel native code gives us a broader toolkit when tackling complex engineering challenges, like our data entry screen.
Diego
If appropriately used in the 21st century, data could save us from lots of failed interventions and enable us to provide evidence-based solutions towards tackling malaria globally. This is also part of what makes the ALMA scorecard generated by the African Leaders Malaria Alliance an essential tool for tracking malaria intervention globally.
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If we are able to know the financial resources deployed to fight malaria in an endemic country and equate it to the coverage and impact, it would be easier to strengthen accountability for malaria control and also track progress in malaria elimination across the continent of Africa and beyond.
West African Lead, ALMA Youth Advisory Council/Zero Malaria Champion
Build fully customizable data capture forms, collect data wherever you are and analyze it with a few clicks β without any training required.
Learn moreΒ Β ο‘Build fully customizable data capture forms, collect data wherever you are and analyze it with a few clicks β without any training required.
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The new apps offers a smooth as butter offline experience. Create cases and entries while offline and sync them automatically to the cloud once you have an internet connection. No more manually uploading data that was stored offline, this now all gets down in the background and automagically.
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Collecting GPS data in your forms was already possible on our iOS app, now you can also do it from our Android app. You may have as many GPS fields within a form.
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This new app has a fresh new interface, optimized for accessibility.
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With our new Android app now released and in the hand of our users we will now move to Teamscope Web (our web dashboard).
Teamscope Web is where you can configure your forms, invite your peers and export your data. A highly requested feature has been to view forms and enter data not just from our mobile app but from the web browser. We call this web-based data entry and it is up next in our product pipeline for coming months.
At Teamscope we are committed to building the world's easiest to use data collection solution. We would not be able to achieve that if it wasn't for your continuous feedback. If you have a feature request or an idea please don't hesitate to write us at support@teamscopeapp.com or schedule a slot on my calendar to chat.
Dear Digital Diary,
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I realized that there is an unquestionable comfort in being misunderstood. For to be understood, one must peel off all the emotional layers and be exposed.
This requires both vulnerability and strength. I guess by using a physical diary (a paper and a pen), I never felt like what I was saying was analyzed or judged. But I also never thought I was understood.
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Paper does not talk back.Using a daily digital diary has required emotional strength. It has required the need to trust and the need to provide information to be helped and understood.
Using a daily diary has needed less time and effort than a physical diary as I am prompted to interact through mobile notifications. I also no longer relay information from memory, but rather the medical or personal insights I enter are real-time behaviours and experiences.
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The interaction is more organic. I also must confess this technology has allowed me to see patterns in my behaviour that I would have otherwise never noticed. I trust that the data I enter is safe as it is password protected. I also trust that I am safe because my doctor and nutritionist can view my records in real-time.
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Also, with the data entered being more objective and diverse through pictures and voice recordings, my treatment plan has been better suited to my needs.
Sincerely,
No more elephants in this room
Diego is the founder and CEO of Teamscope. He started Teamscope from a scribble on a table. It instantly became his passion project and a vehicle into the unknown. Diego is originally from Chile and lives in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
