Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Apr 8, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 9, 2019 - Apr 23, 2019
Date Accepted: Jul 26, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Remotely-Monitored Gamification and Social Incentives to Improve Glycemic Control among Adults with Uncontrolled Type 2 Diabetes (iDiabetes): Protocol for a Randomized, Controlled Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Type 2 diabetes is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Lifestyle modification including increasing physical activity and losing weight have been demonstrated to improve glycemic control. However, most patients struggle to make these changes. Many stakeholders are interested in using gamification and social incentives to increase engagement in healthy behaviors. However, these approaches often do not appropriately leverage insights from behavioral economics which could be used to identify predictable barriers to behavior change.
Objective:
The objective of iDiabetes (Influencing DIabetics to Adapt Behaviors related to Exercise and weighT by Enhancing Social incentives) was to evaluate the effectiveness of gamification interventions that leverage insights from behavioral economics to enhance either supportive, competitive, or collaborative social incentives to improve glycemic control, promote weight loss, and increase physical activity among overweight and obese adults with Type 2 diabetes.
Methods:
We are conducting a one-year, four-arm randomized controlled trial of 361 overweight and obese patients with Type 2 diabetes and a hemoglobin A1c ≥ 8.0. Wireless weight scales and wearable devices are provided to remotely monitor weight and physical activity and transmit data to the study team. Patients establish a baseline measure of weight, daily step count, hemoglobin A1c and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and then repeat these measures at 6 and 12 months. The control arm receives no other interventions. Patients randomized to one of the three intervention arms are entered into a game designed using insights from behavioral economics to enhance either supportive, competitive, or collaborative social incentives. To examine predictors of strong or poor performance, participants completed validated questionnaires on a range of areas including their personality, risk preferences, and social network.
Results:
Enrollment of 361 patients completed in January 2019. Results are expected in 2020.
Conclusions:
The iDiabetes Trial represents a scalable model to remotely monitor the daily health behaviors of adults with type 2 diabetes. Results from this trial will help to provide insights into how to improve the management of patients with type 2 diabetes. Clinical Trial: Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT02961192
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.