Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Apr 28, 2022
Date Accepted: Nov 18, 2022
Design principles in mHealth interventions for sustainable health behaviour changes: A systematic review protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
In recent years, mHealth has increasingly been used to deliver behavioural intervention for disease prevention and self-management. Computing power in mHealth tools can provide unique functions beyond conventional interventions in provisioning personalized behaviour change recommendations and delivering them in real-time supported by dialogue systems. However, mHealth interventions may deliver behaviour change techniques as the end-product, while conventional interventions may be able to deliver social support and direct access to facilities.
Objective:
The goal of this review is to identify best practices for the design of mHealth interventions targeting diet, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour. We aim to identify and summarize the design characteristics of current mHealth tools with a focus on the following features: 1) personalization, 2) real-time function, and 3) deliverable resources.
Methods:
We will conduct a systematic search in electronic databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, PsychINFO, and Web of Science) for studies published since 2010. First, we will use key terms combining mHealth, interventions, chronic disease prevention, and self-management. Secondly, we will use key terms covering diet, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour. Literature resulting from the first and second steps will be combined. Finally, we will use key terms for personalization and real-time function, respectively, to limit the results to interventions that have reported these design features. We expect to perform narrative syntheses for each of the three target design features. Study quality will be evaluated using the Risk of Bias 2 (RoB2) assessment tool.
Results:
We have conducted a preliminary search of existing systematic reviews and review protocols on mHealth supported behaviour change interventions in the literature. We identified several reviews aiming to evaluate the efficacy of mHealth behaviour change interventions in a range of populations, methodologies used to assess mHealth behaviour change randomized trials, and the diversity of behaviour change techniques and theories in mHealth interventions. However, syntheses on unique features in mHealth intervention design are absent.
Conclusions:
Our findings will provide a basis for developing best practices for designing mHealth tools for sustainable behavioural change. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
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.