Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: May 10, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: May 10, 2019 - Jul 5, 2019
Date Accepted: Nov 5, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Effectiveness of PUSH notifications from a mobile app for improving the body composition of overweight or obese women: Randomized Controlled Trial.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Technology and in particular, access to the Internet, from a mobile device, has forever changed the way we relate and execute our own behavior. In recent years, studies have been carried out to analyze the effectiveness of different actions via smarthpone in the field of health, telephone calls, SMS, telemedicine and, more recently, the use of PUSH notifications. We continue to explore ways to increase user interaction with mobile applications, one of the pending subjects in the field of mHealth. By analyzing the data that subjects produce during a clinical trial, we can extract patterns of behavior and design effective protocols in weight loss programs.
Objective:
For all of the above, a clinical trial is proposed to evaluate (1) the efficacy of PUSH notifications in an intervention aimed at improving the body composition of adult women who are overweight or obese, through a dietary intervention, (2) analyze the evolution of body composition based on PUSH notifications and prescribed physical activity.
Methods:
A randomized clinical trial of 3 groups was conducted. All received the same attention in face-to-face consultation, with a frequency of 30 minutes per week, for 6 months. All patients are fitted with an APP designed for this study and a pedometer. The control group does not have access to functionalities related to self-control of weight at home or gamification or prescription of physical activity. The intervention groups are assigned objectives to achieve in the degree of compliance with diet and physical activity, through exclusive access to specific functionalities of the APP. For the analysis of three or more means the ANOVA of repeated means was used to evaluate the effects of the intervention at baseline, at 3 and at 6 months.
Results:
Receiving notifications during the intervention increase the weight that is lost (ßestand. = -0.208) and helps maintain or gain muscle mass (ßestand. = 0.266). However, the most important impact is observed on body fat, increasing its loss to a large degree (ßestand. = -0.397).
Conclusions:
Based on these results, it is possible to conclude the positive effects of PUSH technology on mHealth interventions. Future interventions should extend the period of time of the tests and research the impact that different contents of the messages, times and frequencies of sending them have. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov registration identifier NCT03911583
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