Development and Evaluation of a Mobile Application for Personal Lifestyle Check-Up and Improvement

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed (1) to help individuals analyze their own health status by checking their lifestyle, (2) to develop a user-friendly mobile application that offered prescriptions for lifestyle improvement, and (3) to examine whether the developed application had positive effects on users. Materials and Methods: In order to develop a lifestyle analysis engine that would operate in an Android Ò (Google, Mountain View, CA)-based mobile application, survey data on health awareness behaviors of 25,124 participants from the 2009 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) were analyzed. Additionally, in order for the users to be aware of their lifestyles and explore the effects of the developed mobile application on lifestyle management and improvement, an additional survey of the lifestyle awareness and levels of motivation for lifestyle improvement of 152 users was conducted. Results: The differences between lifestyles before and after using the application were examined. A paired t test was used for questions regarding (1) the level of motivation to improve lifestyles and (2) changes in lifestyle.

Conceptualizing a Mobile App for Foster Youth Transitioning to Adulthood: A Mixed-Method Approach

“…These authors found that the use of the mobile app helped the assessments to be more efficient and accurate when compared to assessments completed via standard "paper-based" format. Others have documented the positive impact of apps on general physical wellness (e.g., Youm & Park, 2014), maternal health (e.g., Noordam, Kuepper, Stekelenburg, & Milen, 2011;Smith et al, 2014), treatment of eating disorders (e.g., Ambwanni, Cardi, & Treasure, 2014) and smoking cessation (e.g., Valdivieso-López et al, 2013), to name a few.…”

Development and psychometric test of the myRisk mobile application for caries risk assessment

“…Many studies have found that mobile apps can also increase productivity by improving personal lifestyles and information management. [24][25][26]37,38 Several studies used mobile devices in various aspects of health management, such as dietary improvement and motivation to exercise. [26][27][28] Regarding oral health issues, several applications were developed to provide knowledge about oral health care, to improve oral behaviour, to do oral health screening before referring to the dentist, and to assess the caries risk of an individual.…”

“…[24][25][26]37,38 Several studies used mobile devices in various aspects of health management, such as dietary improvement and motivation to exercise. [26][27][28] Regarding oral health issues, several applications were developed to provide knowledge about oral health care, to improve oral behaviour, to do oral health screening before referring to the dentist, and to assess the caries risk of an individual. information by themselves so that they will know their risk factors.…”

“…[24][25][26] Some studies used mobile devices in various aspects of health management, such as dietary improvement or motivation to exercise. [26][27][28] Moreover, several mobile applications for improving oral health have been developed to provide knowledge about oral health care as an oral health screening before referring to the dentist and to assess the caries risk of an individual. 24,[29][30][31] However, there is not a widely used mobile application in Thailand for dental CRA that uses a comprehensive evaluation of the related factors.…”

“…Due to the increasing use of mobile phones, their convenience, and easy accessibility, a mobile application can be a tool to provide health information and change the attitudes and behaviours of the users 24–26 . Some studies used mobile devices in various aspects of health management, such as dietary improvement or motivation to exercise 26–28 .…”