Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Aug 13, 2020
Date Accepted: Nov 30, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
EFFECTIVENESS OF SPECIFIC MOBILE HEALTH APPLICATIONS (mHEALTH-APPS) in DIABETES MELLITUS: SCOPING REVIEW
ABSTRACT
Background:
According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) increases dramatically, worldwide, and makes up a big part of the global burden of diseases. At the same time, the ongoing digitalization offers novel possibilities to cope this challenge, for example, by approaching mobile health applications (mHealth-apps). However, diabetes specific mHealth-apps exist in a great variability, but the evidence in terms of their clinical effectiveness is still limited.
Objective:
To evaluate the clinical effectiveness of mHealth-apps in diabetes management analyzing health-related outcomes in patients diagnosed with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).
Methods:
A scoping review was performed. A literature search in the databases Medline (PubMed), Cochrane Library, EMBASE, CINAHL and Web of Science for primary research published between January 2008 and March 2020 was conducted. The studies were categorized by outcomes and types of DM.
Results:
Finally, n=27 studies analyzing n=2887 patients were included, in which predominantly different, but important, health-related outcomes were examined closely. We analyzed n=19 randomized controlled trials (RCTs), n=1 randomized crossover trial (RCrT), n=1 exploratory study (ES), n=1 observational study (OS), and n=5 pre-post design (PPD) studies. Overall, HbA1c values improved clearly in patients diagnosed with T1DM and T2DM. Pleasingly, obvious improvements in terms of “self-care” and “self-efficacy” could be analyzed.
Conclusions:
Diabetes specific mHealth-apps clearly improved glycemic control by reducing HbA1c values in T1DM and T2DM patients significantly, and they effectively enhanced diabetes management in general. However, more research in terms of clinical effectiveness needs to be done more in detail. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.
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