Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Apr 23, 2021
Date Accepted: Jun 15, 2021
An open trial pilot study examining a remote patient monitoring system for pediatric obesity: Design and Methods
ABSTRACT
Background:
Pediatric obesity is a critical public health issue in the US. There is a significant need to augment care in multidisciplinary pediatric obesity clinics with innovative evidence-based technology to improve weight status and health outcomes for children needing specialty pediatric obesity treatment.
Objective:
This manuscript describes the design and methods of an open trial pilot study to examine a remote patient monitoring system (RPMS) for children, 8 to 17 years of age, receiving treatment in a multidisciplinary pediatric obesity clinic.
Methods:
Participants will include 45 youth with obesity and their parents. Families will receive standard care in the clinic and the RPMS for three months. The RPMS consists of a tablet, weight scale, and pedometer. The system provides daily educational content and encourages daily use of the pedometer and weekly weigh-ins. Children and parents will complete baseline, post-treatment (Month 3), and follow-up assessments (Month 6). The main aim of the study is to examine feasibility and satisfaction with the RPMS, as well as assess initial effectiveness.
Results:
We hypothesize high feasibility and satisfaction, with rates over 75% and that after the treatment children will exhibit improved weight status, blood pressure, glucose, A1c, dietary intake, physical activity, health-related quality of life, and self-efficacy compared to pre-treatment and parents will report improved child health-related quality of life and home-food environment. These gains are expected to persist at follow-up.
Conclusions:
This study is novel in that it is the first to design, implement, and examine a RPMS in a pediatric obesity clinic. If the RPMS is feasible, effective, and easily accessible for diverse and underserved families it may prove to be a practical, acceptable, and cost-effective weight management treatment for youth seeking treatment for severe obesity, which has important implications for the future of pediatric obesity treatments. Clinical Trial: Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT04029597
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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.