Mobile Health Applications to Tackle Obesity and Assist Weight-Management Goals among Adults

Abstract

Today, there is not merely a public-health crisis regarding obesity, but a worldwide epidemic. To a degree, clinically significant reductions in weight can be pursued via intensive, conventional interventions to address behaviour. Nonetheless, limits on resources, and the associated costs, make this approach problematic in terms of scalability. As regards intervention content, and as a means of tackling these challenges, researchers have recently devoted more attention to mobile devices and the Internet. A range of behavioural factors generates obesity. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies target these factors and seek to change them, in order to foster healthier lifestyles. Given its portable and relatively inexpensive nature, mHealth comprises a potentially important means of mitigating the morbidity and mortality associated with obesity, as well as the social costs that the condition incurs. The present study seeks to interrogate the extant evidence for the efficacy of mHealth in mitigating the costs of obesity and effecting weight management. It also reviews some of the smartphone applications (apps) associated with the mHealth paradigm. These apps will be considered in terms of their challenges and implications, as well as their potential. In fact, extant research data do suggest that mHealth apps may be delivered remotely, at relatively little cost, as a means of managing adult obesity, and crucially, that they may be deployed more successfully than traditional care. In other words, mHealth evinces much potential, albeit with the caveat that the technology is still in its infancy. It may be some time before its full capacity as a means of reducing obesity is fully exploited. Substantial future research on this issue will be necessary, and it must address cost effectiveness, long-term outcomes, user engagement and the development of applications. Such research will, in due course, allow us to appraise the true feasibility of using mHealth apps as a permanent, and expanding, tool for obesity reduction and weight management.