Use of Mobile Phone App Interventions to Promote Weight Loss: Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Background Obesity and lack of physical activity are major health risk factors for many life-threatening diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. The use of mobile app interventions to promote weight loss and boost physical activity among children and adults is fascinating owing to the demand for cutting-edge and more efficient interventions. Previously published studies have examined different types of technology-based interventions and their impact on weight loss and increase in physical activity, but evidence regarding the impact of only a mobile phone app on weight loss and increase in physical activity is still lacking. Objective The main objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of a mobile phone app intervention for reducing body weight and increasing physical activity among children and adults. Methods PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, EMBASE, and the Web of Science electronic databases were searched for studies published between January 1, 2000, and April 30, 2019, without language restrictions. Two experts independently screened all the titles and abstracts to find the most appropriate studies. To be included, studies had to be either a randomized controlled trial or a case-control study that assessed a mobile phone app intervention with body weight loss and physical activity outcomes. The Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias tool was used to examine the risk of publication bias. Results A total of 12 studies involving a mobile phone app intervention were included in this meta-analysis. Compared with the control group, the use of a mobile phone app was associated with significant changes in body weight (−1.07 kg, 95% CI −1.92 to −0.21, P=.01) and body mass index (−0.45 kg/m2, 95% CI −0.78 to −0.12, P=.008). Moreover, a nonsignificant increase in physical activity was observed (0.17, 95% CI −2.21 to 2.55, P=.88). Conclusions The findings of this study demonstrate the promising and emerging efficacy of using mobile phone app interventions for weight loss. Future studies are needed to explore the long-term efficacy of mobile app interventions in larger samples.

Effectiveness of Integrated Technology Apps for Supporting Healthy Food Purchasing and Consumption: A Systematic Review

“…Due to rapidly growing evidence of their effectiveness and efficiency, technology-based behavioural health interventions are gaining traction as therapeutic resources, both as stand-alone technology or as multi component interventions [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Reflecting on this trend, there are reviews on the efficacy of stand-alone technology apps intervention or multicomponent intervention on healthy lifestyles [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], but still, the developing literature base on technology-based intervention has primarily focused on disease prevention [29,38,42,43], weight management [15,16,18,44,45] or lifestyle improvement outcomes [17,19,44,46], and in many ways has not yet explicated the important implications for a stand-alone technology intervention on healthy food purchases and healthy food consumption outcomes. Along with the relative lack of attention, specifically on healthy food purchasing and consumption, this review paper poses the following important research questions: Are technology app-based interventions effective enough to support healthy food purchase and consumption when compared with the traditional interventions such as face-to-face counselling, literature and group-based education?…”

mHealth prompts within diabetes prevention programs: a scoping review

“…mHealth is a broad and heterogeneous field which is often assessed in its entirety and the impact of individual mHealth components not often teased apart. Assessing mHealth programs as an intervention package (e.g., assessing an app vs assessing those specific components within the app such as prompts and rewards) limits researchers abilities to identify which specific components (e.g., prompts) may be driving behaviour change (23,27,87). A strength of this review is that a single mHealth component, prompts, was singled out to provide a comprehensive overview of usecases to date, and to provide concrete recommendations to further the field of mHealth within DPPs.…”

Sustainable and personalized nutrition: From earth health to public health

“…The approach based upon the artificial neural network should help to integrate at an individual level the main biological indicators, i.e., basal energy expenditure, metabolic flexibility, microbiome (at the interface between food intake and nutrient absorption) and also metabolome, that involves the quantitative analysis of byproducts of cellular activity, in turn derived from the metabolic pathways of living systems [4]. As an end by-product, smart phone apps might help to translate nutritional recommendations into individual lifestyles [8]. However, reliability and feasibility of personalized nutrition are still challenged by issues requiring further investigation.…”