JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The popularisation of mobile health applications for public health or medical care purposes has transformed human life significantly improving lifestyle behaviours and chronic condition management.

Objective:

This review aimed to identify techniques that are commonly used in mobile health and highlight the most appropriate for designing an optimal strategy to improve data reporting.

Methods:

We performed a systematic review of studies published between 2010 and 2021 in relevant scientific databases to identify and analyse mobile health interventions using behavioural change techniques that evaluated their effectiveness in terms of user adherence. Search terms included a mix of general (e.g., data, information, adherence), computer science (e.g., mobile health, behaviour change techniques), and medicine (e.g., personalised medicine) terms.

Results:

This systematic review included 20 studies and revealed that among the top five most used BCTs in the studies: (i) feedback and monitoring along with associations have been used homogeneously in effective and ineffective studies (ii) personalisation, goals and planning improve the effectiveness of the interventions, since they have higher presence in effective than in ineffective studies, (iii) shaping knowledge has lower presence in effective than ineffective studies.

Conclusions:

We found that five behaviour change techniques are the most used in mobile health apps. However, they are not necessarily the most effective since there are studies that use these techniques and do not report significant results in the proposed objectives; there is a notable overlap in the techniques used in ineffective studies. Besides, personalisation, goals and planning type techniques were the most used behaviour change techniques in effective trials.