Exploring college students’ fitness and health management based on Internet of Things technology

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to help college students improve their physical health and build a sound health management system. The physical exercise and health management of college students following IoT (Internet of Things) are studied. First, the current situation of college students’ physical quality is analyzed, and it is found that the college students’ physical quality and mental states decline in recent years. Second, the connotation of health management is briefly introduced and its necessity is analyzed. Health management cannot only improve the physical condition of students but also cultivate students’ strong will. Then, the application and characteristics of IoT are described, and the framework of physical exercise is designed based on IoT. Finally, a questionnaire survey is designed, and the survey results are compared and analyzed. According to the statistical results of the intervention group and the control group before and after the intervention, it is found that physical exercise has a significant effect on improving the physical and mental states of college students. The average scores of each dimension of physical states after the intervention are higher than those before the intervention, and the scores of each symptom in mental illnesses are lower than those before the intervention. This shows that the main method of health management based on physical exercise has a very obvious positive effect, which helps college students to improve their physical and mental states and cultivate their good habit of taking exercise.

Keywords

Internet of Things college students health management physical exercise mental health

1. Introduction

As the successors of China’s future, college students are an indispensable and valuable reserve of human resources for social development. College students are the fate of the country and the hope of the nation, and their health is as important as their superior talents. In addition to study, college students should always pay attention to the cultivation of their physical quality on campus [6] because physical health is the basis and premise of learning and life. Only having a healthy physique can contribute to the development of the country and society. Schools and teachers should establish correct ideas on physical exercise and guide students to cultivate a strong physique and tough endurance [19]. From the perspective of long-term development, the health of young students is related to the development of the country, so colleges and universities should carry out necessary health management mechanisms for college students, build a health management system suitable for college students through physical exercise, and combine health education and physical exercise to guide college students to establish a correct concept of health management [15]. Building a scientific and reasonable health management system for college students is the common goal of the country, society, and schools [8]. For college students themselves, health management is not only related to their physical and mental health but also benefits college students by cultivating good exercise habits and developing long-term physical exercise thinking [16]. Therefore, constructing a sound health management system will contribute to the all-around development of college students. At present, the health management system tends to be intelligent and digital. Due to the large number of college students and the complex health states, it is necessary to use big data technology to evaluate the health situation reasonably [20]. Data processing and analysis are needed to evaluate college students’ health information, design reasonable physical exercise plans, and collate evaluation reports [13]. IoT (Internet of Things), cannot only greatly improve the efficiency of data processing and the accuracy of analysis, but also arouse students’ participation enthusiasm, and interactive interest. The core method of building health management based on IoT is to use machine learning and neural network to analyze the data via the computer, find out the inherent law of students’ physical exercise, and predict the unknown data. Since there are many irrelevant interference factors, data statistics are prone to deviation, and IoT based on neural network learning can continuously optimize the correlation of data, improving the quality of data and making the analysis of health management more intelligent [11]. With the gradual maturity of IoT, its ability to collect and analyze data can help college students change the traditional way of taking exercise, select appropriate exercise plans and equipment according to their conditions, truly realizing the intelligent and digital health management system [22].

Based on IoT, the health management system of college students is studied. According to the physical and mental states of college students, there is a common problem that they lack physical exercise. Therefore, strengthening PE (physical education) and implementing physical exercise intervention are important means of health management. Under the support of IoT, data analysis of students’ physical exercise can be carried out to help build a scientific and reasonable health management system. The correlation test of physical exercise intervention is conducted by a questionnaire survey. Finally, an effective intervention is realized through physical exercise for college students’ health management, which has an important reference for the construction of health management systems in colleges and universities.

2. Current situation of college students’ physical exercise and health management

2.1. Current situation of college students’ physical quality

In recent years, the phenomena of college students’ fainting during military training and sudden death in physical test college students appear endlessly, which directly reflects the poor physical condition of college students in China [25]. Data surveys show that in the past 30 years, the physical fitness and health level of Chinese adolescents show a downward trend. The continuous increase of the number of obese adolescents, students’ myopia rate, their mental illnesses, and the decline of adolescents’ social adaptability are the direct manifestations of the decline of college students’ physical health. The reasons can be mainly divided into internal and external causes [12]. Internal factors mainly include: (1) their dim self-exercise consciousness. In daily life and learning, they think learning is much more important than physical exercise. The rest time after study is spent in taking remedial classes, and they have no time to exercise, and no idea to do physical exercise; (2) their indulging in the Internet and mobile phones. Now college students are increasingly dependent on mobile phones. They like to find happiness in their mobile phones instead of exchanging and communicating with others, thus losing the motivation and interest in participating in physical exercise; (3) their poor self-discipline. It is also the reason for less participation in physical exercise. Research finds that a large part of college students participate in physical exercise just for achieving good results in physical examination [24]. And external reasons include (1) social factors. Society does not instill sports ideas and spirits into children and they are more biased towards sports. They argue that doing sports is not useful and important; (2) school factors. University gymnasium cannot meet the needs of students’ physical exercise, and sometimes limits the participation of students [18]. Lack of a strong campus sports atmosphere, few school sports activities, and lack of professional teachers’ guidance also affect the enthusiasm of students to participate in sports activities. It is not difficult to find that college students have too much nightlife, irregular work and rest time, unhealthy eating habits, lack of physical exercise, and incorrect ways of dealing with people, which are the main reasons for poor physical health [27]. The development of science and technology has made college students’ learning and life more “rich”. They spend most of their time playing games on computers and mobile phones. A serious lack of physical exercise also makes more and more college students in the sub-health state, causing obesity, myopia, and chronic insomnia.

2.2. Connotation and necessity of health management

Health management is the whole process of comprehensive monitoring, analysis, evaluation, provision of health advice, and guidance, and intervention of health risks for individuals or groups [26]. The health management service system takes “health first” as the guiding ideology, aiming at providing targeted services for people’s health and cultivating people’s correct health concepts and awareness. The best effect of health management services and the formation and improvement of people’s correct health concepts are achieved by making full use of effective resources and platforms in society [9]. The basic steps of establishing a health management system include: knowing about people’s health status, analyzing and assessing possible health risks, carrying out health intervention, and analyzing and evaluating the effect after the intervention. Health information collection, collation, and archiving is the primary stage of health management. And then health information is analyzed and evaluated, which helps to determine the direction of health intervention. Health intervention can predict possible health status based on physical examination data and results of relevant medical institutions and carry out targeted health guidance and physical exercise guidance to prevent and maintain personal health, reducing the risk of diseases. The targeted and planned interventions to reducing the health risks of the managed population are carried out [10]. In other words, health management is to avoid suffering from diseases, effectively prevent or reverse the formation of diseases, or shift people’s health risks from the high to the low.

College students’ health management service system aims to introduce new health management and service method. Based on the detection, analysis, and evaluation of their health states, targeted health interventions and comprehensive prevention and control of health risk factors in the health management service system are conducted. Health management plays an important role in intervention, so it is necessary to introduce the health management service system into universities. It is not only a simple intervention for students but also the most important way to help college students’ establish lifelong health awareness. This not only makes them benefit from life but also greatly reduces the burden of family and society. College students’ health states require to attach great importance to actively seeking new measures to solve it. This provides the urgent, necessary, and long-term significance of introducing health management service systems in universities. The establishment of college students’ health management service system can improve the health level of college students, reduce the government, schools and families’ investment in college students’ health, improve the quality of life of college students, let them enjoy taking exercise, establish a healthy self-management model for college students and make great contributions to their health and national development [17].

2.3. Application of IoT in health management system

The basic definition of IoT is that all items are connected to the network according to the predetermined protocol for information communication and exchange to complete intelligence through information sensing technologies, such as laser scanners, global positioning systems, infrared sensors, and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). And it is centralized management, positioning, monitoring, identification, tracking network. The “Internet Definition” is the premise of “IoT”, which extends its client to all items and expands the communication and exchange of information to complete the integration of public and physical systems [4]. This makes the management and life more dynamic and detailed to achieve “intelligent” living conditions, promote productivity, and improve resource utilization, thereby changing the relationship between man and nature. According to the RFID and the agreed integration of communication protocol and network, the intelligent management and identification of goods are completed, and this information are connected to form a network. With the continuous development of applications and technologies, the significance of IoT is increasingly rich. It can essentially complete the integration of intelligent processing of things, networking interconnection, and perception and identification control, ultimately achieving intelligent decision-making [2]. The physical phenomena on the Internet are perceived and identified through intelligent facilities and sensing technology. The communication interconnection is developed through the Internet to realize processing, judgment, and calculation, discover knowledge, realize seamless connection between objects, and complete information interaction. The ultimate goal is to accurately manage and real-time control the physical world. Without manual operation, objects in the physical world of IoT can communicate with each other, realizing intelligent judgment and automatic processing. Nowadays, the rapid development of IoT brings a profound impact on the IT industry. IoT can be applied in all walks of life, and the accumulated business knowledge is integrated into its architecture, which has great value [21].

2.4. Design of health management system following IoT

The design of a health management system based on IoT is mainly carried out from the two aspects. First, the user’s physical exercise is collected and processed into data through mobile devices, and stored in the cloud database of IoT. The big data analysis is realized through the established database sharing, and the current situations of physical exercise and physical and mental health of all users are analyzed to make a preliminary assessment. Second, personalized exercise plans for users are developed after their data are analyzed, the sports which they like are recommended intelligently and one-on-one guidance is given, improving the scientificity and accuracy of the health management system [7].

IoT includes three layers, namely the Internet of Things layer, the data layer, and the application layer. Among them, the Internet of Things layer, which is similar to the sensor network in the main framework of the Internet of Things, is an important basis for actual network connection. It is composed of intelligent medical equipment systems, and mainly used to implement intelligent medical equipment for traditional medical equipment, so that intelligent medical equipment can perceive transmission and connection, and collect motion data, such as the speed of movement, the communication with sports environment parameters, and actual health equipment and intelligent terminals (smart TV, mobile phones, and tablets) [14].

The data layer is equivalent to the middleware in IoT. It is used to receive and store the data from the Internet of Things layer, provide a data interface for the application layer, and display data. The data layer is composed of data transmission and a cloud database. Data transmission is mainly used to receive the motion data sent by the underlying fitness equipment, upload the motion data to the cloud database, and display them in real-time. Physical exercise data are stored through a cloud database, and data services are provided for the sports health management system in the application layer through a data interface [23].

The application platform in the main framework of IoT is mainly composed of interactive exercise applications, multi-screen interactive applications, and health pipeline systems. interactive exercise applications include interactive swimming, games, and fitness guides. Interactive games should use physical models in a practical exercise to exercise and improve entertainment. Fitness guidelines should be used in real-time to guide users to carry out effective and scientific training, and specific fitness plans of users can be formulated by analyzing historical motion data in a cloud data database. Multi-screen interaction is mainly used to realize multi-screen interaction between smart phones and intelligent electronic videos, realizing the remote control of electronic videos by mobile phones and multi-screen interactive action game and improving the experience of platform use and interaction. The general health management system includes mobile terminals. The main purpose is to provide users with the data of exercise and the management platform, and the guidance of taking exercise from health experts [1].

2.5. Design of the questionnaire

The fitness intervention strategy is a scientific intervention strategy formulated based on personal characteristics and physical conditions to comprehensively improve students’ physical states and promote their physical health. The purpose of physical health management is achieved through the intervention for college students in PE (Physical Education) and extracurricular sports activities, and the role of PE in the health management system is played.

300 freshmen in local university A are selected as the research objects, and questionnaires are distributed to them, with 150 as the members of the intervention group with the fitness intervention and 150 as the control group without fitness intervention.

The health states of the subjects are statistically analyzed, including the basic situation of the body, the physical quality test reports, and the basic situation of mental health. Some problems in the questionnaire come from the health survey questionnaire and the mental health scale of college students. After the basic situation files are established, the physical condition and physique of the subjects are tested through the school sports center and the school hospital. After the tests are done, the experiment is carried out, and the students in the intervention group are given a three-month fitness intervention. Three months later, the physical states of all students are tested again. The data before and after the intervention are compared and analyzed to make a correct assessment.

Data processing method: The experimental data are counted in tables, and the t-test is used for multi-dimensional comparison to analyze the data.

3. Analysis of the results after the fitness intervention

3.1. Effect of the fitness intervention on college students’ health

The physical states of the subjects before and after the intervention are compared and analyzed. The results of some problems in the questionnaire are statistically analyzed, and then the t-test is used to test the correlation of the data. The results are shown in Fig. 1. The figure shows that such items in the health test scale as physical function, physical pain, physical vitality, overall health, and social ability, have significant differences before and after the intervention ( $P < 0.05$ ). The scores after the intervention are higher than those before the intervention, indicating that the intervention is helpful for the physical health of college students. In addition, the scores of the intervention group and the control group (without the intervention) are compared, as shown in Fig. 2. The figure shows that the difference between the intervention group and the control group in all dimensions of physical states is obvious ( $P < 0.05$ ), and the average score of the intervention group is higher than that of the control group, indicating that the intervention has a significant improvement in the health of college students.

Fig. 1.

Comparison of physical states before and after the intervention.

Fig. 2.

Comparison of scores between the intervention group and the control group.

3.2. Influence of fitness intervention on the mental health of college students

The mental states of the subjects are investigated and compared. And the scores of the Chinese mental health scale of college students and the results of the t-test before and after the intervention are shown in Figs 3 and 4. The figures show that the average scores of several items in the Chinese mental health scale of college students are significantly different except for the items of anxiety and impulse ( $P < 0.05$ ). The ratio before and after the intervention is statistically significant. The average scores of somatization, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and paranoid after the intervention are lower than those before the intervention, indicating that fitness management has a certain positive effect on promoting the mental health of students.

The average scores of the intervention group and the control group are compared and the results are shown in Figs 5 and 6. The figures show that the average score of the intervention group is significantly lower than that of the control group, and the scores of the items have obvious difference ( $P < 0.05$ ) before and after the intervention except for the items of somatization and impulse, indicating that the fitness intervention has a positive guiding effect on promoting the mental health of college students, and reduces the symptoms of some mental disorders.

Fig. 3.

Comparison of the scores of mental states before and after the intervention 1.

Fig. 4.

Comparison of the scores of mental states before and after the intervention 2.

Fig. 5.

Comparison of the scores of mental states between the intervention group and the control group 1.

Fig. 6.

Comparison of the scores of mental states between the intervention group and the control group 2.

4. Conclusion

Based on IoT, the health management of college students is studied, and physical exercise is taken as the main means to promote the physical health and mental health of college students. Through the questionnaire survey, the health states of college students before and after the intervention are statistically analyzed. After the scores before and after the intervention are compared, it is found that college students’ physical states have been improved after the students participate in health management activities [5]. The scores of physical function, physical pain, physical vitality, overall health, and social ability are higher than those before the intervention. In terms of mental states, other mental states have been significantly improved before and after the intervention except for anxiety and impulse, indicating that fitness intervention plays a very important role in health management. Due to the limitation of personal ability, the time of the fitness intervention is relatively short, and the intervention effect cannot be evaluated in detail [3]. Therefore, further research is needed in the future. It is believed that with the continuous development of IoT, the health management system of college students will be more perfect, and the physical and mental states of college students will receive more and more attention.

Conflict of interest

None to report.

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