mHealth Application Project: Argus Silva 1

Argus: Activity Tracker

Silva, Jessica

Health 302- Introduction to Health Informatics Sec 004

mHealth Application Project

California State University, Channel Islands

December 5, 2019
mHealth Application Project: Argus Silva 2

Argus is a mobile health application that is primarily used for tracking daily physical

activity and counting calories by keeping a food diary. Having tested this mobile application for

about two months, I would recommend Argus to other users only as a tool to track steps and

physical activity. The application is free and easy to use, the user's only responsibility is to be

able to have their phone on their person at all times, allowing the app to track your activity.

Using Argus was simple and for the majority of the time, I completely forgot it was running on

my phone. Each day, the sum of steps I had taken was accumulated and presented as a bar graph

by the minute, showing activity throughout the day and when I had sparks of activity. This

visualization was easy to understand and gave me insight as to when I was least and most active.

Improvement on my health while using Argus was not a straight line of success. In the

beginning, my motivation was strong, and I was finally wanting to improve my health. My

significant other also helped motivate me as well, as he had started working at a fitness club and

was wanting to improve his physical fitness. I can recall asking him if we could begin taking

long walks to the beach again, as it had been a while since we had done so. My goal was not to

jump headfirst and begin training, but I did want to begin improving my cardiovascular health

and finding a way to manage stress through exercise. Therefore, our walks were not planned

every day, but we did plan them almost every week and over the course of a couple weeks, our

time to achieve three miles decreased significantly as opposed to when we first started. In

addition, I also began to incorporate swimming, which I thoroughly enjoyed and preferred rather

than running because it was gentler on my back and joints. I found myself excited to dedicate

time to walk, swim, or get extra steps in throughout the day. This was a big improvement from

before where I did not engage in physical activity because I assumed I never had the time and if I

did, it was not worth it due to infrequency. I always felt proud of myself after a workout or
mHealth Application Project: Argus Silva 3

reaching my goal of 10,000 steps or more. I attempted to keep this personal health journey going

even after a whole month, unfortunately, as soon as midterms and finals came up, I lost all

motivation to continue. School became overwhelmingly stressful, and papers and assignments

were due back to back. This led to isolation as my time was consumed by school, homework, and

work which meant I did not make time for exercise.

I believe one component that helped me keep consistent with improving my physical

fitness in addition to Argus, was having a companion. According to Fit & Well by Fahey, having

an exercise partner plays an important part because they make the experience more enjoyable

and it results in the likelihood of sticking to fitness goals (Fahey, Insel, & Roth, 2018).

Admittedly, I am accountable for not taking into consider obstacles I would face and creating a

flexible plan able to withstand or effectively approach them. I must take responsibility for the

fact that I chose to put my fitness journey on hiatus but am more informed as to what

improvements I can make for when I resume.

I do not have plans to continue using Argus in the future as I recently purchased a Fitbit.

The Fitbit is more convenient when I want to see my step count throughout the day, can track

more than just my steps, and I get sent reminders when I should get up and move. However,

Argus was beneficial before I purchased a wearable device, therefore, I highly recommend it for

those who cannot afford to buy a wearable device and are more favorable of something cheap

and still closely accurate.

Overall, Argus was a great mobile health application as it was free, worked well, it didn’t

have any issues, and I didn’t have to use cellular data in order for it to track my physical activity

throughout the day. On the Apple store, Argus received a high rating of 4.9 out of 5 and

consisted of approximately 30,000 reviews (Azumio Inc., 2015). The overall consensus on the
mHealth Application Project: Argus Silva 4

reviews were similar to mine in which users appreciated the app being free, it did not drain

phone battery even though it tracked your activity all day long, and the analytics helped many to

view their activity in a day and encouraged them to continue and improve their fitness goals. I

believe one thing I would change about Argus is its inaccuracy when calculating burned calories

in relation to steps I achieved in a day. I remember it would say I burned about 100 calories

when I was home for an entire day doing nothing but sitting at my desk working on homework. I

had a feeling these numbers were incorrect to begin with but others who may have little

experience with mobile health applications might consider them to be legitimate. This error can

be bad for those trying to manage or lose weight as they may think they can help themselves to

an extra serving or think they should exercise less in order to maintain their calories. Another

downside to Argus was, because I took on swimming as my preferred exercise, it was difficult,

for obvious reasons, to track the activity I did as I swam laps. I had to manually go into the

Argus database, find the swimming tab, and add in duration, distance, and start time. Inputting

this information was inconvenient for me as I would’ve preferred an easier way to track this

exercise. Overall this was an experience I have never encountered before in an online class and I

appreciate the time that was focused on this semester long project. For a couple of months, I was

able to prioritize my health and well-being by improving my physical fitness.

mHealth Application Project: Argus Silva 5

References

Azumio Inc. (2015). Argus (5.218) Apple App Store,

Retrieved from https://apps.apple.com/us/app/argus-calorie-counter-step/id624329444.

Fahey, T. D., Insel, P. M., & Roth, W. T. (2018). Fit & Well: Core Concepts and Labs in

Physical Education and Wellness (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. Retrieved from

https://player-ui.mheducation.com/#/epub/sn_0759#epubcfi(/6/162[data-uuid-

c7f265fdf3174eceb82578edb7693374]!/4/8[data-uuid-

d9f3f71ad88b4187b5e7f698bae3d229]/2[data-uuid-

c4a6897edf5e433ca6da4327f0699cbd]/2[data-uuid-

403ac8631e5b421c89d259dccead3e99]).