Dr. Pedja Klasnja

Biography

Pedja Klasnja's research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and Health Informatics. He studies how technology can help individuals manage their health and effectively communicate with healthcare providers. A significant portion of health improvement—such as physical activity, healthy eating, and medication adherence—occurs in daily life outside the clinical setting. Klasnja explores how technology can assist people in adopting and maintaining health-promoting habits. He sees mobile technology as a particularly powerful tool for providing support, especially given that 60% of the U.S. population owns smartphones, which serve as pocket computers with continuous internet access and numerous sensors. These devices are constantly at hand, making mobile phones an ideal platform for supporting health behavior changes. His work focuses on using technology to improve patient communication with healthcare teams and to gather and share health information that aids treatment decisions. Klasnja employs a wide range of research methods including interviews, surveys, and field studies, with a current methodological focus on micro-randomized trials for optimizing mHealth interventions. His projects span various health domains, particularly cancer care, physical activity, and diabetes management, with ongoing investigations into medication adherence and self-management of conditions such as bipolar disorder and cardiac rehabilitation.

Research Interests