In today’s fast-paced world, where convenience often trumps commitment, maintaining good health can feel like an uphill battle. But what if the key to a healthier life was right in your pocket?
In come digital health tools – those simple mobile apps, websites, and text messages – that can be downloaded in seconds and have the potential to transform your lives. A new study from the University of South Australia, led by Dr Ben Singh and Prof Carol Maher, has revealed that these dinky digital companions have a powerful effect when it comes to improving health and wellbeing of users.
Essentially, these electronic and mobile health interventions can boost steps, and encourage better diets, improved sleep, and even significant weight loss. How, you ask? These tools remind users to take their medications and track adherence, thus promoting better management of their health.
Chronic disease management
Dr Singh says he was motivated to study digital health tools due to the alarming global rise in chronic diseases.
“The estimated global economic burden of chronic diseases—projected to be US $47 trillion between 2010 and 2025—highlighted for us the urgent need for effective solutions,” said Dr Singh. “We noticed that conditions like obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and type 2 diabetes were strongly linked to modifiable behaviours such as physical inactivity, sedentary lifestyles, poor diet, and insufficient sleep.”
Smartphones and wearables (smartwatches, rings, patches, etc) provide personalised, real-time support for behaviour change among users. “These interventions have key advantages, including accessibility, customization, real-time feedback, and the potential to reach large populations,” Dr Singh explained. “These features could effectively address the widespread issue of non-adherence to recommended health behaviours, offering a promising approach to managing and preventing chronic diseases on a global scale.”
Dissecting digital health tools
Titled, ‘A systematic umbrella review and meta-meta-analysis of eHealth and mHealth interventions for improving lifestyle behaviours’, the study analysed data from over 206,000 people across 47 studies. However, it wasn’t without some challenges.
“One major difficulty was that the studies we looked at were very different from each other in terms of how they were conducted, who was included, and what was measured,” revealed Dr Singh. “This made it tricky to compare them directly. Another concern was that many of the studies weren’t of the highest quality—more than half were rated quite poorly, which can affect how much we can trust their findings.”
To tackle these challenges, the team followed strict guidelines (known as PRISMA 2020) to ensure they included all relevant studies, searching through nine different databases.
“We divided the studies into subgroups to see if different factors—like age, type of intervention, or study quality—affected the results differently. We used a statistical method called ‘random effects models’ to account for the differences between studies.”
The findings were thus very reliable, says Dr Singh. “We found that the effectiveness of different digital health tools varied depending on the specific health behaviour being targeted, leading to mixed results regarding which medium was most effective.”
For increasing daily steps, web-based interventions were the most successful, leading to an average increase of 2,185 steps per day. This was significantly higher than the increases seen with mobile plus web-based interventions (1,616 steps/day) and mobile app-only interventions (911 steps/day).
When it came to boosting moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), interventions that combined different mediums were the most effective, resulting in an increase of 74.8 minutes per week. This was followed by mobile and web-based interventions (56.3 minutes/week) and web-based only interventions (13.4 minutes/week).
In terms of reducing energy consumption (calories consumed), mobile and web-based interventions were the most effective, leading to a reduction of 181.7 calories per day. This was followed by mobile apps alone (147.9 calories/day) and mixed interventions (52.1 calories/day).
Hope for patients
Among all the positive outcomes of digital health tools, one that surprised Dr Singh the most are sleep-related. Digital interventions work remarkably for sleep outcomes because these tools offer continuous monitoring and personalised feedback, making them well-suited for helping people manage and improve their sleep over time.
“Sleep interventions have traditionally focused on specific conditions like sleep apnoea. However, our results suggest that digital tools, like apps and online programs, can effectively improve sleep for a wider range of people, not just those with specific sleep disorders,” he said. “Given that about 30% of the general population struggles with sleep difficulties, this highlights a significant unmet need that digital health tools could help address.”
Another important discovery in their research was that the benefits of digital health tools might sustain over the long term, even when the intervention has ended.
“However, we emphasised the importance of more research to better understand how long these behaviour changes last,” he added.
So, can these digital tools be integrated into traditional healthcare systems and eventually replace in-person care, we ask.
“In our research, we viewed digital health tools as a complement to traditional healthcare rather than a replacement for in-person care,” Dr Singh clarifies. “By extending the reach of healthcare systems, e- and m-health tools can offer continuous support and monitoring between clinical visits. Healthcare providers could also recommend these digital interventions to encourage lifestyle changes in their patients.”
In a nutshell, digital tools should work alongside, not replace, in-person care, providing an added layer of support in the journey toward better health.
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