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      Circadian Rhythms in the Telephone Calls of Older Adults: Observational Descriptive Study

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          Abstract

          Background

          Recent studies have thoughtfully and convincingly demonstrated the possibility of estimating the circadian rhythms of young adults’ social activity by analyzing their telephone call-detail records (CDRs). In the field of health monitoring, this development may offer new opportunities for supervising a patient’s health status by collecting objective, unobtrusive data about their daily social interactions. However, before considering this future perspective, whether and how similar results could be observed in other populations, including older ones, should be established.

          Objective

          This study was designed specifically to address the circadian rhythms in the telephone calls of older adults.

          Methods

          A longitudinal, 12-month dataset combining CDRs and questionnaire data from 26 volunteers aged 65 years or older was used to examine individual differences in the daily rhythms of telephone call activity. The study used outgoing CDRs only and worked with three specific telecommunication parameters: (1) call recipient (alter), (2) time of day, and (3) call duration. As did the studies involving young adults, we analyzed three issues: (1) the existence of circadian rhythms in the telephone call activity of older adults, (2) their persistence over time, and (3) the alter-specificity of calls by calculating relative entropy.

          Results

          We discovered that older adults had their own specific circadian rhythms of outgoing telephone call activity whose salient features and preferences varied across individuals, from morning until night. We demonstrated that rhythms were consistent, as reflected by their persistence over time. Finally, results suggested that the circadian rhythms of outgoing telephone call activity were partly structured by how older adults allocated their communication time across their social network.

          Conclusions

          Overall, these results are the first to have demonstrated the existence, persistence, and alter-specificity of the circadian rhythms of the outgoing telephone call activity of older adults. These findings suggest an opportunity to consider modern telephone technologies as potential sensors of daily activity. From a health care perspective, these sensors could be harnessed for unobtrusive monitoring purposes.

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          Most cited references33

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          Harnessing Smartphone-Based Digital Phenotyping to Enhance Behavioral and Mental Health.

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            A survey of results on mobile phone datasets analysis

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                JMIR Mhealth Uhealth
                JMIR Mhealth Uhealth
                JMU
                JMIR mHealth and uHealth
                JMIR Publications (Toronto, Canada )
                2291-5222
                February 2020
                25 February 2020
                : 8
                : 2
                : e12452
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Orange Labs Chemin du Vieux Chêne Meylan France
                [2 ] University Grenoble Alpes, AGEIS Grenoble France
                [3 ] LabCom Telecom4Health University Grenoble Apes & Orange Labs Grenoble France
                [4 ] Institut Universitaire de France Paris France
                Author notes
                Corresponding Author: Timothée Aubourg timothee.aubourg@ 123456gmail.com
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0151-6397
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8335-9240
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9518-9675
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3773-393X
                Article
                v8i2e12452
                10.2196/12452
                7064945
                32130156
                10f4412f-2ded-4398-bedc-a07e51fb0828
                ©Timothée Aubourg, Jacques Demongeot, Hervé Provost, Nicolas Vuillerme. Originally published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (http://mhealth.jmir.org), 25.02.2020.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mhealth.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

                History
                : 9 October 2018
                : 31 March 2019
                : 24 May 2019
                : 28 June 2019
                Categories
                Original Paper
                Original Paper

                outgoing telephone call,circadian rhythm,older adults,call-detail records,digital phenotyping,digital biomarkers,digital health,mhealth

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