scholarly journals Efficacy and Effectiveness of Mobile Health Technologies for Facilitating Physical Activity in Adolescents: Scoping Review

10.2196/11847 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. e11847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra M Lee ◽  
Sarah Chavez ◽  
Jiang Bian ◽  
Lindsay A Thompson ◽  
Matthew J Gurka ◽  
...  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra M Lee ◽  
Sarah Chavez ◽  
Jiang Bian ◽  
Lindsay A Thompson ◽  
Matthew J Gurka ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Increasing physical activity (PA) levels in adolescents aged 12 to 18 years is associated with prevention of unhealthy weight gain and improvement in cardiovascular fitness. The widespread availability of mobile health (mHealth) and wearable devices offers self-monitoring and motivational features for increasing PA levels and improving adherence to exercise programs. OBJECTIVE The aim of this scoping review was to identify the efficacy or effectiveness of mHealth intervention strategies for facilitating PA among adolescents aged 12 to 18 years. METHODS We conducted a systematic search for peer-reviewed studies published between 2008 and 2018 in the following electronic databases: PubMed, Google Scholar, PsychINFO, or SportDiscus. The search terms used included mHealth or “mobile health” or apps, “physical activity” or exercise, children or adolescents or teens or “young adults” or kids, and efficacy or effectiveness. Articles published outside of the date range (July 2008 to October 2018) and non-English articles were removed before abstract review. Three reviewers assessed all abstracts against the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Any uncertainties or differences in opinion were discussed as a group. The inclusion criteria were that the studies should (1) have an mHealth component, (2) target participants aged between 12 and 18 years, (3) have results on efficacy or effectiveness, and (4) assess PA-related outcomes. Reviews, abstracts only, protocols without results, and short message service text messaging–only interventions were excluded. We also extracted potentially relevant papers from reviews. At least 2 reviewers examined all full articles for fit with the criteria and extracted data for analysis. Data extracted from selected studies included study population, study type, components of PA intervention, and PA outcome results. RESULTS Overall, 126 articles were initially identified. Reviewers pulled 18 additional articles from excluded review papers. Only 18 articles were passed onto full review, and 16 were kept for analysis. The included studies differed in the sizes of the study populations (11-607 participants), locations of the study sites (7 countries), study setting, and study design. Overall, 5 mHealth intervention categories were identified: website, website+wearable, app, wearable+app, and website+wearable+app. The most common measures reported were subjective weekly PA (4/13) and objective daily moderate-to-vigorous PA (5/13) of the 19 different PA outcomes assessed. Furthermore, 5 of 13 studies with a control or comparison group showed a significant improvement in PA outcomes between the intervention group and the control or comparison group. Of those 5 studies, 3 permitted isolation of mHealth intervention components in the analysis. CONCLUSIONS PA outcomes for adolescents improved over time through mHealth intervention use; however, the lack of consistency in chosen PA outcome measures, paucity of significant outcomes via between-group analyses, and the various study designs that prevent separating the effects of intervention components calls into question their true effect.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. e29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Matthew-Maich ◽  
Lauren Harris ◽  
Jenny Ploeg ◽  
Maureen Markle-Reid ◽  
Ruta Valaitis ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shao-Wei Yeh ◽  
Chun-Yan Yuan ◽  
Yu-Feng Wu ◽  
Rui Shen

BACKGROUND Promoting physical activity for adolescence is a global challenge in public health. Physical inactivity and sedentary behaviors have been regarded to cause harmful chronic diseases to adolescent lifespan. However, high engagement in mobile technology for students may provide opportunities to help change adolescent unhealthy behaviors. Therefore, school sectors may play an important key role, such as implementing mobile health (mHealth) intervention to change students’ unhealthy behaviors and promote regular physical exercise behaviors, especially during the transition from adolescence to young adult. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to explore university students’ daily exercise patterns upon intervention of school-based mHealth project. METHODS Students’ physical exercise participation was recorded with students’ mobile application. With 4152 university freshmen (1476 males, 2676 females) and 335898 of their exercise records were analyzed (mean frequency of 38.2 ±16.10 in males, 45.1±10.81 in females) during the semester. RESULTS Under the school intervention project, students that exercised on Friday and Saturday was lower than that on other days, which indicated that the participation in exercise were more active on weekdays than on weekends. Among the participants who completed the requirement set by the school intervention project, both males and females used weekends to do exercise. On the other hand, overweight male university students participated in physical activity more than the requirement of the school intervention project and their exercise duration were found to be significantly higher than other participants. CONCLUSIONS Understanding a week of daily exercise patterns among youth upon the school mHealth Apps intervention can benefit in developing efficient and flexible projects to promote physical health and improve regular exercise participation in youth.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Hang Wu ◽  
Ching Ju Chiu ◽  
Yen Ju Liou ◽  
Chun Ying Lee ◽  
Susan C. Hu

BACKGROUND There is still no consensus on research terms for smart healthcare worldwide. The study conducted by Lewis 10 years ago showed extending geographic access was the major health purpose of health-related information communication technology (ICT), but today's situation may be different because of the rapid development of smart healthcare. Objective: The main aim of this study is to classify recent smart healthcare interventions. Therefore, this scoping review was conducted as a feasible tool for exploring this domain and summarizing related research findings. OBJECTIVE The main aim of this study is to classify recent smart healthcare interventions. Therefore, this scoping review was conducted as a feasible tool for exploring this domain and summarizing related research findings. METHODS The scoping review relies on the analysis of previous reviews of smart healthcare interventions assessed for their effectiveness in the framework of a systematic review and/or meta-analysis. The search strategy was based on the identification of smart healthcare interventions reported as the proposed keywords. In the analysis, the reviews published from January 2015 to December 2019 were included. RESULTS The number of publications for smart healthcare's systematic reviews has continued to grow in the past five years. The search strategy yielded 210 systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses addressed to target groups of interest. 68.5% of these publications used mobile health as a keyword. According to the classification by Lewis, 37.62% of the literature was applied to extend geographic access. According to the classification by the Joint Commission of Taiwan (JCT), 48.84% of smart healthcare was applied in clinical areas, and 60% of it was applied in outpatient medical services. CONCLUSIONS Smart healthcare interventions are being widely used in clinical settings and for disease management. The research of mobile health has received the most attention among smart healthcare interventions. The main purpose of mobile health was used to extend geographic access to increase medical accessibility in clinical areas. CLINICALTRIAL none


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jannika M. John ◽  
Vanessa Haug ◽  
Ansgar Thiel

Abstract Background Physical activity behavior is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. For its analysis, transdisciplinary biopsychosocial approaches yield great potential. In health research, the biopsychosocial model has experienced a renaissance. Researchers have tried to grasp the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. With this scoping review, we aimed to examine how the ‘biopsychosocial’ has been conceptualized in scientific work related to physical activity behavior. Methods The scoping review was informed by the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR). A systematic literature search was conducted in Web of Science, SportDiscus, PsycArticles, PsycInfo, and PubMed. Only articles published in peer-reviewed journals that contained all three components of a biopsychosocial approach (e.g., bio/physio/genetic, psycho/mental, and socio/cultural/environmental) were included. We only included articles in our narrative synthesis that integrated physical activity behavior into a biopsychosocial model, or investigated or described physical activity behavior on the basis of such a model. Results Thirteen studies met the inclusion criteria; eight articles pursued a biopsychosocial approach in the tradition of Engel, five employed a socio-ecological approach. The models in the analyzed articles referred to either correlates of physical activity behavior, or the influence of physical activity on health or aging. Only a minority of the articles, however, referred to interactions between biological, psychological, and social factors. Conclusions The included articles were quite heterogeneous in their approach to physical activity from a biopsychosocial perspective. The included articles illustrate that the adoption of a biopsychosocial perspective may assist to capture and understand the complex phenomenon of physical activity behavior and might inform future transdisciplinary physical activity research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarina Åsberg ◽  
Marcus Bendtsen

Abstract Background Evidence suggests that unhealthy lifestyle behaviours are modifiable risk factors for postoperative complications. Digital behaviour change interventions (DBCIs), for instance text messaging programs and smartphone apps, have shown promise in achieving lifestyle behaviour change in a wide range of clinical populations, and it may therefore be possible to reduce postoperative complications by supporting behaviour change perioperatively using digital interventions. This scoping review was conducted in order to identify existing research done in the area of perioperative DBCIs for reducing alcohol consumption, improving dietary intake, increasing physical activity and smoking cessation. Main text This scoping review included eleven studies covering a range of surgeries: bariatric, orthopaedic, cancer, transplantation and elective surgery. The studies were both randomised controlled trials and feasibility studies and investigated a diverse set of interventions: one game, three smartphone apps, one web-based program and five text message interventions. Feasibility studies reported user acceptability and satisfaction with the behaviour change support. Engagement data showed participation rates ranged from 40 to 90%, with more participants being actively engaged early in the intervention period. In conclusion, the only full-scale randomised controlled trial (RCT), text messaging ahead of bariatric surgery did not reveal any benefits with respect to adherence to preoperative exercise advice when compared to a control group. Two of the pilot studies, one text message intervention, one game, indicated change in a positive direction with respect to alcohol and tobacco outcomes, but between group comparisons were not done due to small sample sizes. The third pilot-study, a smartphone app, found between group changes for physical activity and alcohol, but not with respect to smoking cessation outcomes. Conclusion This review found high participant satisfaction, but shows recruitment and timing-delivery issues, as well as low retention to interventions post-surgery. Small sample sizes and the use of a variety of feasibility outcome measures prevent the synthesis of results and makes generalisation difficult. Future research should focus on defining standardised outcome measures, enhancing patient engagement and improving adherence to behaviour change prior to scheduled surgery.


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