Development and Pilot Testing of the Eating4two Mobile Phone App to Monitor Gestational Weight Gain

Abstract

BackgroundThe number of pregnant women with a body mass index (BMI) of 30kg/m2 or more is increasing, which has important implications for antenatal care. Various resource-intensive interventions have attempted to assist women in managing their weight gain during pregnancy with limited success. A mobile phone app has been proposed as a convenient and cost-effective alternative to face-to-face interventions.ObjectiveThis paper describes the process of developing and pilot testing the Eating4Two app, which aims to provide women with a simple gestational weight gain (GWG) calculator, general dietary information, and the motivation to achieve a healthy weight gain during pregnancy.MethodsThe project involved the development of app components, including a graphing function that allows the user to record their weight throughout the pregnancy and to receive real-time feedback on weight gain progress and general information on antenatal nutrition. Stakeholder consultation was used to inform development. The app was pilot tested with 10 pregnant women using a mixed method approach via an online survey, 2 focus groups, and 1 individual interview.ResultsThe Eating4Two app took 7 months to develop and evaluate. It involved several disciplines--including nutrition and dietetics, midwifery, public health, and information technology--at the University of Canberra. Participants found the Eating4Two app to be a motivational tool but would have liked scales or other markers on the graph that demonstrated exact weight gain. They also liked the nutrition information; however, many felt it should be formatted in a more user friendly way.ConclusionsThe Eating4Two app was viewed by participants in our study as an innovative support system to help motivate healthy behaviors during pregnancy and as a credible resource for accessing nutrition-focused information. The feedback provided by participants will assist with refining the current prototype for use in a clinical intervention trial.

Health Care Professionals� Attitudes Toward, and Experiences of Using, a Culture-Sensitive Smartphone App for Women with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: Qualitative Study (Preprint)

“…This is in line with other studies reporting an information overload among pregnant women [15,36]. Similarly, a pilot test of an app to monitor gestational weight gain found that it could help pregnant women to cope with the great amount of information provided by different sources [37]. In addition, given the rapid increase in available apps to manage GDM [38], participants in our study outlined that it was important that they could trust the developer and information in the app.…”

Characteristics of Smartphone Applications for Nutrition Improvement in Community Settings: A Scoping Review

“…Regarding tailored feedback, both positive and negative reinforcement were considered motivating by overweight (90) and young-adult populations (99), although young adults were clear this should not feel like "telling off " (93). A user-friendly and age-appropriate presentation of content was important for adolescent and young-adult populations (57,76), with star representations of healthiness reportedly appealing to adults and traffic-lights appealing to adolescents (77). Images of portion sizing and rating the relative healthiness of meal options helped with nutrition knowledge development for young adults (76) and low-SES populations (79).…”

“…Field deployment (real-time use of the application by consumers in the intended setting), with or without participant observation, was the most common testing design used. This approach was taken in 3 nutritionimprovement trials (36,48,50) and 13 application-development projects (65,68,70,72,74,76,79,80,85,(88)(89)(90)92). Other common approaches were testing of application components (36,52,75,85) and focus groups (73,85,86).…”

“…Of the trials using a field deployment design and reporting the duration of user testing, 1 tested the application for less than 1 wk (88), 5 for 2-4 wk (50, 72, 74, 79, 80), 3 for 6-10 wk (48,65,76), and 2 for between 6 and 10 mo (70,90).…”

“…The size of the testing sample varied greatly. The most common size was between 11 and 20 testers (9 studies) (48,72,79,85,86,(88)(89)(90)92), followed by #10 testers (4 studies) (73,76,85,90), 21-50 testers (3 studies) (36,74,77), 51-100 testers (2 studies) (70, 80), 101-200 testers (2 studies) (75,92), and least commonly >200 testers (1 study) (65).…”