Efficacy of the Digital Therapeutic Mobile App BioBase to Reduce Stress and Improve Mental Well-Being Among University Students: Randomized Controlled Trial

Ponzo, Sonia; Morelli, Davide; Kawadler, Jamie M.; Hemmings, Nicola R; Bird, Geoffrey; Plans, David

doi:10.2196/17767

Cited by 75 publications

(180 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Tables 2, 3 resumes the methodological characteristics of the included studies. Eleven studies are randomized controlled trials (RCT) (Witkiewitz et al, 2014;Gajecki et al, 2017;Harrer et al, 2018;Lee and Jung, 2018;Fish and Saul, 2019;Huberty et al, 2019;Bruehlman-Senecal et al, 2020;Flett et al, 2020;McCloud et al, 2020;Newman et al, 2020;Ponzo et al, 2020) and two studies are considered quasi-experimental trials (Benton et al, Significant improvements in depression (g = 1.08), anxiety (g = 0.73), stress (g = 0.81), psychological flexibility (g = 0.64) (all p < 0.01). System usability ratings were within "excellent" range (M =9 0, SD = 0.66)…”

Section: Methodological Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of Mobile App-Based Psychological Interventions for College Students: A Systematic Review of the Literature

et al. 2021

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Serious mental health disorders are increasing among college students and university counseling services are often overburdened. Mobile applications for mental health have been growing exponentially in the last decade and they are emerging in university settings as a promising tool to promote and intervene in college students' mental health. Additionally, considering the recent covid-19 pandemic, mHealth interventions, due to its nature and possibilities, may play an important role in these institutions. Our main objectives are to explore mhealth interventions in universities, regarding its conceptual framework, acceptability and efficacy outcomes and understand its impact and contributions to address treatment delivery and psychological difficulties resulting from covid-19 pandemic. The literature search was conducted in scientific databases, namely, Web of Science, Pubmed, and Scopus. A search in app stores was not conducted, thus regarding commercially available apps, only those found in our database search were included in our review. We selected studies with mobile applications addressing psychological interventions for college students. A total of 2,158 participants were included in the 8 selected studies and most interventions were delivered through mobile apps only and based in cognitive behavioral therapy. Results suggested that college students accept and adhere to these interventions and preliminary evidence of efficacy was demonstrated in different disorders, such as stress, anxiety, depression and risky behaviors such as alcohol and tobacco abuse and sexual knowledge. We conclude that universities, particularly college counseling services, may benefit from mhealth interventions, not only to address college students' mental health but to decrease some of its difficulties related to lack of human resources. Specifically in covid-19 pandemic context, these interventions may contribute significantly by promoting and delivering psychological interventions at a safe distance.

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Section: Methodological Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of Mobile App-Based Psychological Interventions for College Students: A Systematic Review of the Literature

et al. 2021

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“…The BioBase app, previously containing content for workplace stressors, has been shown to increase well-being and decrease anxiety after 4 weeks of use [ 52 , 53 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To create relevant scenarios in which to base an intervention, a persona narrative was created by a psychologist (NH) which was centered around everyday life for a person with GAD. These narratives were based on the psychologist’s experience of user feedback from previous BioBase studies with individuals with high anxiety [ 52 , 53 ] in conjunction with the aforementioned review of the literature. Examples include:…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development and Feasibility of a Digital Acceptance and Commitment Therapy–Based Intervention for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Pilot Acceptability Study

Hemmings¹,

Kawadler²,

Whatmough³

et al. 2021

JMIR Form Res

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Background Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is characterized by excessive worry that is difficult to control and has high comorbidity with mood disorders including depression. Individuals experience long wait times for diagnosis and often face accessibility barriers to treatment. There is a need for a digital solution that is accessible and acceptable to those with GAD. Objective This paper aims to describe the development of a digital intervention prototype of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for GAD that sits within an existing well-being app platform, BioBase. A pilot feasibility study evaluating acceptability and usability is conducted in a sample of adults with a diagnosis of GAD, self-referred to the study. Methods Phase 1 applied the person-based approach (creation of guiding principles, intervention design objectives, and the key intervention features). In Phase 2 participants received the app-based therapeutic and paired wearable for 2 weeks. Self-report questionnaires were obtained at baseline and posttreatment. The primary outcome was psychological flexibility (Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II [AAQ-II]) as this is the aim of ACT. Mental well-being (Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale [WEMWBS]) and symptoms of anxiety (7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment [GAD-7]) and depression (9-item Patient Health Questionnaire [PHQ-9]) were also assessed. Posttreatment usability was assessed via self-report measures (System Usability Scale [SUS]) in addition to interviews that further explored feasibility of the digital intervention in this sample. Results The app-based therapeutic was well received. Of 13 participants, 10 (77%) completed the treatment. Results show a high usability rating (83.5). Participants found the digital intervention to be relevant, useful, and helpful in managing their anxiety. Participants had lower anxiety (d=0.69) and depression (d=0.84) scores at exit, and these differences were significantly different from baseline (P=.03 and .008 for GAD-7 and PHQ-9, respectively). Participants had higher psychological flexibility and well-being scores at exit, although these were not significantly different from baseline (P=.11 and .55 for AAQ-II and WEMWBS, respectively). Conclusions This ACT prototype within BioBase is an acceptable and feasible digital intervention in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression. This study suggests that this intervention warrants a larger feasibility study in adults with GAD.

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“…-The first dataset (D1) contains an extraction of IBI data collected on a group of 273 users through wristband sensor [32]. The participants used the BioBeam for four weeks.…”

Section: Datasets and Experimental Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topographic mapping for quality inspection and intelligent filtering of smart-bracelet data

Bacciu

Bertoncini

Morelli

2021

Neural Comput & Applic

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Wrist-worn wearable devices equipped with heart activity sensors can provide valuable data that can be used for preventative health. However, hearth activity analysis from these devices suffers from noise introduced by motion artifacts. Methods traditionally used to remove outliers based on motion data can yield to discarding clean data, if some movement was present, and accepting noisy data, i.e. subject was still but the sensor was misplaced. This work shows that Self Organizing Maps (SOMs) can be used to effectively accept or reject sections of heart data collected from unreliable devices, such as wrist worn devices. In particular, the proposed SOM-based filter can accept a larger amount of measurements (less false negatives) with an higher overall quality with respect to methods solely based on statistical analysis of motion data. We provide an empirical analysis on real world wearable data, comprising heart and motion data of users. We show how topographic mapping can help identifying and interpreting patterns in the sensor data and help relating them to an assessment of user state. More importantly, our experimental results shows the proposed approach is able to retain almost twice the amount of data while keeping samples with an error that is an order of magnitude lower with respect to a filter based on accelerometric data.

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Efficacy of the Digital Therapeutic Mobile App BioBase to Reduce Stress and Improve Mental Well-Being Among University Students: Randomized Controlled Trial

Cited by 75 publications

References 52 publications

Effectiveness of Mobile App-Based Psychological Interventions for College Students: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Effectiveness of Mobile App-Based Psychological Interventions for College Students: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Development and Feasibility of a Digital Acceptance and Commitment Therapy–Based Intervention for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Pilot Acceptability Study

Topographic mapping for quality inspection and intelligent filtering of smart-bracelet data

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