Digital Histories for Future Health

In this paper we describe the opportunity for digital behavioral histories to empower individuals to engage in positive health behaviors. The digital trails we leave by using various social, mobile and web services and self-tracking tools can be used to create a compelling digital narrative of past behaviors. The use of these digital narratives should be explored for the purpose of facilitating self-efficacy and positively re-framing health behaviors. We first describe the digital environment that supports our concept of digital histories. We then explore the current methods being employed by health services. Lastly, we explain the theoretical value of digital narratives and give examples of possible implementation strategies that could be used to influence health behaviors.