What are the best practices for using health and wellness apps to improve health outcomes?

Introduction

Health and wellness apps have become increasingly popular tools for promoting healthy behaviors and managing health conditions. These apps offer various features such as feedback, monitoring, personalized coaching, and gamification to engage users and improve health outcomes. This synthesis aims to identify the best practices for using health and wellness apps to improve health outcomes based on recent research findings.

Key Insights

Effectiveness of App-Based Interventions:
- Health and wellness apps can effectively improve diet, physical activity, and sedentary behaviors, with multi-component interventions being more effective than stand-alone apps .
- Apps that provide feedback and monitoring, goal setting, and personalized plans show significant improvements in health behaviors and outcomes .
User Engagement and Motivation:
- High user engagement is crucial for the effectiveness of health apps. Features such as real-time engagement, usage reminders, and gamified interactions enhance user motivation and adherence .
- Personalized feedback and goal-setting techniques are commonly used to maintain user engagement and improve adherence to health behaviors .
Role of Clinician Support:
- Clinician-assisted interventions have higher completion rates and better adherence to health goals compared to self-guided app use. However, both methods can lead to similar health improvements if the intervention is completed .
- The clinician-patient relationship plays a significant role in the success of app-based interventions, suggesting that combining app use with clinician support may yield better outcomes.
Behavior Change Techniques:
- Effective health apps often incorporate behavior change techniques such as self-monitoring, non-specific rewards, social support, and focus on past success .
- Apps that use a combination of behavior change techniques tend to be more effective in promoting health behaviors and improving health outcomes .
Design and Usability:
- Health literate app design, which includes usability and health literacy strategies, can improve the quality and usefulness of health information, leading to better health outcomes.
- Poorly designed apps may contribute to challenges in understanding and acting on health information, especially for users with low health literacy.

Conclusion

Health and wellness apps can be effective tools for improving health outcomes when they incorporate multi-component interventions, personalized feedback, and behavior change techniques. High user engagement, often enhanced through gamification and real-time interactions, is crucial for the success of these apps. Clinician support can further improve adherence and completion rates, suggesting a combined approach may be most beneficial. Additionally, designing health literate apps can enhance usability and ensure that users can effectively understand and act on health information.

What are the best practices for using health and wellness apps to improve health outcomes?

Summary

Introduction

Key Insights

Conclusion

Sources and full results

Mobile App-Based Health Promotion Programs: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Mobile app-based health promotion programs show better health outcomes for general population users compared to non-users, with common topics including diet, physical activity, and overall healthy lifestyle improvement.

Efficacy of interventions that use apps to improve diet, physical activity and sedentary behaviour: a systematic review

App-based interventions can be effective in improving diet, physical activity, and sedentary behavior, with multi-component interventions appearing more effective than stand-alone apps.

Smartphone Applications for Patients' Health and Fitness.

Smartphone apps can effectively improve patients' health and fitness by using data from inbuilt tools to create personalized plans, provide feedback, and motivate through social media sharing.

Gamification for health promotion: systematic review of behaviour change techniques in smartphone apps

Few health apps use gamification, with a wide variation in behavior change techniques, potentially limiting potential improvements in health outcomes.

Effectiveness of Mobile Apps to Promote Health and Manage Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Mobile health apps show a weak evidence-based advantage over standard care in modifying behavior to promote health and manage disease, highlighting the need for improved methodological and evaluative approaches.

Creating wellness apps with high patient engagement to close the intention–action gap

Smartphone and smart watch apps can enhance wellbeing and engagement in mental health treatment, but require high patient engagement to effectively improve health behaviors and attitudes.

mHealth Apps Using Behavior Change Techniques to Self-report Data: Systematic Review

Personalization, associations, and goals and planning techniques are the most used behavior change techniques in mHealth apps, but their effectiveness varies and requires further research on longer follow-up periods.

Designing Health Literate Mobile Apps

Health literate apps, which apply both usability and health literacy strategies, can improve the quality and usefulness of health information for all users, leading to better outcomes.

Mental Health Messages in Prominent Mental Health Apps

Mental health apps may promote medicalization of normal mental states and individual responsibility for mental well-being, which should be challenged in the clinician-patient relationship to prevent overdiagnosis and ensure supportive care.

Comparing a clinician-assisted and app-supported behavioral activation intervention to promote brain health and well-being in frontline care

Clinician-assisted behavioral activation interventions have higher completion rates and better goal-setting, while both methods improve psychological outcomes and behavioral outcomes in promoting brain health and well-being.

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