JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital interventions have tremendous potential as versatile tools to improve wellbeing and healthcare conveyance by enhancing adequacy, proficiency, availability, security, and personalization. They have gained recognition in interventions to improve sedentary behavior. Still, their effectiveness is unsure on healthy lifestyle promotion and behavior monitoring focusing on the prevention of obesity and overweight as a prime objective. Therefore, we review different digital intervention methods to identify the impact on changing the growth of negative behavior in humans and to learn digital behavior intervention concepts, parameters, strategies, and associated challenges. Moreover, we summarize key parameters and key concepts for the generation of effective personalized behavior recommendations to promote a healthy lifestyle.

Objective:

This study intends to analyze the effect of healthy behavior (physical activity, healthy habits, and proper dietary pattern) on weight change after evaluating the effectiveness of digital interventions on healthy behavior as a meta-analysis.

Methods:

We conducted a systematic literature review to search the scientific databases (Nature, SpringerLink, Elsevier, IEEE Xplore, and PubMed) that included digital interventions on healthy behavior, focusing on the prevention of obesity and overweight as a prime objective. Peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and 2020 were included. We used the PRISMA guidelines and framework for evidence-based systematic review and meta-analysis.

Results:

Our initial searches identified 780 potential studies through electronic and manual searches; however, 107 articles in the final stage have been cited following the specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. The utilized digital components for health interventions were mobile, computers, smartphone applications, chatbot, multimedia (audio, video, image, game, and text), GPS, internet (web), social media, online self-reporting, smart sensors, and actuators. The identified vital components for a successful digital intervention for healthy lifestyle are environment, motivation, recommendation generation, goal-based and shared decision making, mentoring and feedback generation, self-determination, behavioral determinants, participant engagement, psychological empowerment, persuasion, digital literacy, and the evaluation of satisfaction, efficiency, and complexity. In this study, we focus on the principles of digital health intervention methods to understand the essential digital health intervention components, their effectiveness, associated implementation challenges, and impact on the generation of personalized behavior recommendation.

Conclusions:

This systematic literature review selected intervention principles (rules), theories, design features, effective recommendations, effectiveness, and associated weaknesses for behavior intervention from established digital intervention methods. The identified principles help us understand how digital interventions influence healthy behavior management, focusing on weight change, and overcome existing shortcomings. It serves as a basis for further research with a focus on designing, developing, testing, and evaluating the generation of personalized behavior recommendations. Clinical Trial: NA