JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Everyday health behaviors such as diet, physical activity, tobacco use, and medication adherence contribute significantly toward long-term health. Clinicians often struggle addressing, motivating, and following behavior change in their patients. Traditional methods of reaching patients including clinician led education or health coaches have inconsistent results and are poorly scaled. While it may be helpful for patients to hear about behavior change from their primary care clinicians, it often is not enough to lead to sustained behavior change. The rapid evolution and adoption of digital and mobile health technologies (such as wearable devices and smartphone-based applications) allow for seamless, passive, and remote tracking of common behaviors such as physical activity or sleep patterns. Despite their growth, routine use of digital health data to induce behavior change for chronic conditions has been unexplored and underutilized by clinicians. Integrating mobile health data within clinical practice and intertwining remote data capture with strategies rooted in behavioral science, have an enormous opportunity to improve health across populations. We describe the challenges and opportunities clinicians face as they attempt to induce behavior change within the context of mhealth adoption and advancements.