Chris Bull
Lecturer
I am an interdisciplinary researcher spanning Digital Health, Software Engineering, and HCI. I am interested in designing, creating, and studying novel Digital Health software systems. These systems are used for sensing, understanding, and actioning health data to radically transform how people live their lives.
My research often focuses on creating secure health informatics and cybernetics platforms (and ecosystem elements) as a digital health infrastructure. These include healthcare technologies (including assistive, diagnostic, self-management, and healthcare professional systems) for healthy ageing, mental health, and neurodegenerative conditions using digital sensing, IoT, and mobile devices. Within this work, I often explore the development of novel digital health biomarkers and bespoke systems for handling digital health data (e.g., sensing, secure transmission, and analysis), Natural Language Processing tools, mobile/web analytics (Software-as-a-Service), and mobile applications. I use co-design/creation and other participatory design methods as part of my Requirements Engineering and design processes to create solutions applicable to patients, service users, and health professionals. I am also interested in considering the ethical challenges of healthcare technologies. One example of relevant research is the IDEA-FAST project (Identifying digital endpoints for fatigue and sleep for people living with chronic conditions)—within this project I have adopted the role as a Work Package co-lead.
Other research interests include collaborative aspects and human-factors of software engineering, and pedagogical approaches (particularly Studio-Based Learning) and educational technologies (Ed-Tech) for teaching Software Engineering. Within this space I have collaborated on novel software architectures, designed and developed tool concepts (collaborative IDEs, predictive modelling of bad smells using software versioning), and also exploring future tool and process designs that better support collaborative and reflective software engineering.
EPSRC Northern Health Futures Digital Health Hub
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IDEA-FAST: Identifying digital endpoints for fatigue and sleep for people living with chronic conditions
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2025
The Last JITAI? Exploring Large Language Models for Issuing Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions: Fostering Physical Activity in a Prospective Cardiac Rehabilitation Setting
2025 – CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25)
2024
Generative AI Assistants in Software Development Education: A vision for integrating Generative AI into educational practice, not instinctively defending against it
2024 – IEEE Software
Editorial: Supporting sustainable behavior change and empowerment in ubiquitous and learning health systems
2024 – Frontiers in Digital Health
Smartphone Apps for Food Purchase Choices: Scoping Review of Designs, Opportunities, and Challenges
2024 – JMIR
Thematic Analysis of Self-Regulation Narratives in Textual Posts by Informal Programming Learners on Social Media
2024 – 2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)
Exploring the Potential of AI Chatbots for Supporting Individuals with Dementia: Thematic Insights from User-Centered Workshops
2024 – 12th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI '24)
2023
Assessment of non-directed computer-use behaviours in the home can indicate early cognitive impairment: A proof of principle longitudinal study
2023 – Aging & Mental Health
Exploring the Support for Self-Regulation in Adult Online Informal Programming Learning: A Scoping Review
2023 – ITiCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1
Reverse Engineering of Digital Measures: Inviting Patients to the Conversation
2023 – Digital Biomarkers
Technology acceptance of digital devices for home use: Qualitative results of a mixed methods study
2023 – Digital Health
Regulatory Qualification of a Cross-Disease Digital Measure: Benefits and Challenges from the Perspective of IMI Consortium IDEA-FAST
2023 – Digital Biomarkers
2021
Data Contribution Summaries for Patient Engagement in Multi-Device Health Monitoring Research
2021 – Adjunct Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2021 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiComp-ISWC ’21 Adjunct)
Requirements Engineering for Well-Being, Aging, and Health: An Overview for Practitioners
2021 – IEEE Software
2020
GP Benchmark: Engineering a Crowd-Sourcing Platform for Real-Time Understanding of Personality and Cognitive Biases in Clinical Error
2020 – IEEE First International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Well-Being, Aging, and Health (REWBAH)
What Happens in Peer-Support, Stays in Peer-Support: Software Architecture for Peer-Sourcing in Mental Health
2020 – IEEE 44th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC)
Known and unknown requirements in healthcare
2020 – Requirements Engineering
2019
From Smart Homes to Smart-Ready Homes and Communities
2019 – Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders
Examining Interdependencies and Constraints in Co-Creation
2019 – DIS '19: Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference