The use of smartphone health apps and other <scp>mobile h</scp>ealth (mHealth) technologies in dietetic practice: a three country study

Chen, Juliana; Lieffers, Jessica; Bauman, Adrian; Hanning, Rhona M.; Allman‐Farinelli, Margaret

doi:10.1111/jhn.12446

Cited by 134 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(97 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

137

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…With the increase in awareness of the possibilities of appbased dietary assessment and use of the most popular nutrition-related apps, our findings will help clinicians and researchers to be better informed about using these apps to facilitate nutrition care and research, and about whether their use can replace traditional research software. Reported barriers to app use in dietetic practice in the three-country survey by Chen et al included lack of awareness about the best app to recommend [7] and whilst MyFitnessPal was the most popular app recommended by dietitians in this survey; none of the other apps assessed in the present study were recommended [7].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 58%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Popular Nutrition-Related Mobile Apps: An Agreement Assessment Against a UK Reference Method (Preprint)

Fallaize¹,

Franco²,

Pasang³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Nutrition-related apps are commonly used to provide information about the users' dietary intake, but limited research has been performed on the evaluation of their reliability. Objective: To evaluate the relative reliability of popular nutrition-related apps for the assessment of energy and available macro-and micronutrients against a standard method. Methods: Dietary analysis of 24-hour weighed food records (n = 20) were compared between five nutrition-related apps: S Health, MyFitnessPal, FatSecret, Noom Coach and Lose It!, and DietPlan6 (reference method). Estimates of energy, macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein, fat, saturated fat and fibre) and micronutrients (sodium, calcium, iron, vitamin A and vitamin C) were compared using t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, correlation coefficients and Bland-Altman plots. 24-hour weighed food records from 20 participants (female/male, 15/5; mean age, 36.3 years; mean body mass index, 22.9 kg/m 2 ) recruited from previous controlled studies conducted at the Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition, University of Reading, UK. Results: No significant difference in estimation of energy and saturated fat intake between DietPlan6 and the diet apps was observed. Estimates of protein and sodium intake were significantly lower using Lose It! and FatSecret than DietPlan6. Lose It! also gave significantly lower estimates for other reported outputs: carbohydrate, fat, fibre and sodium, compared with DietPlan6. For S Health and MyFitnessPal, calcium, iron and vitamin C were all significantly under-estimated compared with DietPlan6, although there was no significant difference for vitamin A. No other significant differences were observed between DietPlan6 and the apps. Correlation coefficients ranged from -0.12 for iron (S Health vs. DietPlan6) to 0.91 for protein (FatSecret vs DietPlan6). Noom Coach was limited to energy output but it had a high correlation with DietPlan6 (r=0.91) and S Health had the greatest variation of correlation, with energy at 0.79. Bland-Altman analysis revealed potential proportional bias for vitamin A. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the apps provide comparable estimates of energy and saturated fat intake compared with DietPlan6. With the exception of Lose It!, the apps also provided comparable estimates of carbohydrate, total fat and fibre. Two apps displayed a tendency to underestimate protein and sodium (FatSecret and Lose It!). Apart from vitamin A, the estimates of micronutrient intake (calcium, iron and vitamin C) by the two apps (S Health and MyFitnessPal) were inconsistent and less reliable. Lose It! was the less comparable app in relation to DietPlan6. As the use and availability of apps grows, this study helps clinicians and researchers to make betterinformed decisions about using these apps in research and practice.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 58%

“…Known limitations of these apps include limited nutrient data, particularly micronutrients, and inaccurate nutrient compositions [1], [6]. Despite this, reported nutrition app use in dietetic practice in the UK, New Zealand and Australia (5% response rate from the practitioners contacted) is high (62%) [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Popular Nutrition-Related Mobile Apps: An Agreement Assessment Against a UK Reference Method (Preprint)

Fallaize¹,

Franco²,

Pasang³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many patients in our study already used mobile phone photos (mostly taken by others) to inspect their ulcers. While related work shows that people with diabetes take photos of the food they have eaten and share them with dieticians [24,25], our study now shows that many people have also already adopted mobile phones to take foot images to share with relevant others (either clinicians or carers). This also makes it more likely that people will use MyFootCare to take photos and track their healing process in real life.…”

Section: Principal Resultsmentioning

confidence: 77%

Promoting Self-Care of Diabetic Foot Ulcers through a Mobile Application: A User-Centred Design and Evaluation (Preprint)

Ploderer¹,

Brown²,

Seng³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Without effective self-care, people with diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are at risk of prolonged healing times, hospitalization, amputation, and reduced quality of life. Despite these consequences, adherence to DFU self-care remains low. New strategies are needed to engage people in the self-care of their DFUs. Objective: We aimed to evaluate the usability and usefulness of a new mobile application to engage people with DFUs in self-care. Methods: We developed a new mobile application, "MyFootCare", to engage patients with DFU through goal-setting, progress monitoring, and reminders in self-care. Key features included novel visual analytics that automatically extracts and monitors DFU size information from mobile phone photos of the foot. A functional prototype of MyFootCare was created and evaluated through a user-centred design process with 11 participants with DFUs. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews discussing existing self-care practices and observations of MyFootCare with participants. Data were analysed qualitatively through thematic analysis. Results: Key themes were: (1) Participants already used mobile phone photos to monitor their DFU progress, but (2) had limited experience with using smartphone applications. (3) Participants desired the objective DFU size data provided by the tracking feature of MyFootCare to monitor their DFU progress. (4) Participants were ambivalent about the MyFootCare goal setting and diary features, commenting that these features were useful but also that it was unlikely that they would use them. (5) Participants desired to share their MyFootCare data with their clinicians to demonstrate engagement in self-care and to reflect on their progress. Conclusions: MyFootCare shows promising features to engage people in DFU self-care. Most notably, ulcer size data is useful to monitor progress and engage people. However, more work is needed to improve the usability and accuracy of MyFootCare, i.e., by refining the process of taking and analysing DFU photos and removing unnecessary features. These findings open the door for further work to develop a system that is easy to use and functions in everyday life conditions, and to trial it with people with DFUs and their carers.

show abstract

“…An additional 185 respondents completed the quantitative study but did not attempt any open-ended questions [19]. Four responses were excluded as they were nonattempts to the questions (eg, ?, -, a, test), thus responses from 381 respondents were analyzed.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Health Apps to Support Dietetic Professional Practice and Their Patients: Qualitative Results From an International Survey

Chen¹,

Lieffers²,

Bauman³

et al. 2017

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundDietitians are engaging with mobile health (mHealth) technologies, particularly with diet and nutrition apps in their patient care. Despite the plethora of apps available, the majority are not designed with a dietitian’s input.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to identify the user preferences of dietitians in relation to tools, resources, and design features for smartphone health apps that would support their dietetic professional practice and their patients.MethodsAs part of a larger international Web-based survey of health-app use among dietitians, three open-ended responses were included for specific exploration of app design features and additional resources or tools that could guide the development of apps for use in dietetic practice and patient care. Inductive thematic analysis of responses was conducted using the qualitative data analysis program, NVivo version 11 (QSR International Pty Ltd), to understand the design preferences and features valued by dietitians.ResultsThe responses from 381 dietitian respondents were analyzed. Five key themes were identified. Dietitians wanted access to credible apps, suggesting that dietetic associations should have greater involvement in reviewing and endorsing evidence-based apps for use in dietary counseling. Improvements to the usability of apps, relating to their ease of use and design, were also raised, as self-monitoring of dietary behaviors using existing nutrition apps was deemed to be burdensome. Furthermore, apps providing dietitian-oriented support were favored, for example, those with the ability to streamline the dietary assessment process, so that dietitians could spend more time on dietary counseling and negotiating patient goals for dietary and lifestyle behavior change. Provision of patient-oriented support, such as functionality to tailor apps to patient-specific needs, was also considered important. Finally, respondents valued apps that could integrate into their work systems to enhance the quality of the dietitian-patient relationship.ConclusionsApp developers should draw upon the features and characteristics valued by dietitians to guide their development of apps that support dietetic practice and enhance patient care. Moreover, to achieve better dietitian and patient-centered app design, it is imperative that app developers take a collaborative approach with dietitians, their professional associations, and their patients.

show abstract

The use of smartphone health apps and other mobile health (mHealth) technologies in dietetic practice: a three country study

Cited by 134 publications

References 59 publications

Popular Nutrition-Related Mobile Apps: An Agreement Assessment Against a UK Reference Method (Preprint)

Popular Nutrition-Related Mobile Apps: An Agreement Assessment Against a UK Reference Method (Preprint)

Promoting Self-Care of Diabetic Foot Ulcers through a Mobile Application: A User-Centred Design and Evaluation (Preprint)

Designing Health Apps to Support Dietetic Professional Practice and Their Patients: Qualitative Results From an International Survey

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About