Effectiveness of PUSH Notifications From a Mobile App for Improving the Body Composition of Overweight or Obese Women

Overview

A clinical three-armed assay has been established to permit an evaluation of the effectiveness of implementing PUSH notifications in the actions orientated towards improving body composition through the establishment of dietary patterns and an increase in physical activity.

The use of mobile technology is already part of the investigator's daily life and its presence is increasing exponentially. The term mHealth (mobile health) was used and defined for the first time in 2000. This concept was subsequently employed in the 2010 mHealth Summit of the Foundation for National Institutes of Health (FNIH) to refer to "the provision of medical attention services through mobile communication devices". Around 40% of the over 300,000 applications available in the different apps stores are related to health themes, with those focused on the monitoring and management of diseases standing out. One of the characteristics of mobile applications is the sending and receiving of messages through a system of notifications known as "PUSH", that consists of requests appearing on the display of the Smartphone at a scheduled time, permitting them to be customizable both in their contents and at the time of sending them PUSH notifications are pro-active as they offer visual and/or aural alerts to inform the recipient of a message or event received and invite them to act on them, even without the App being in use. On receiving the notification, the user can interact in different degrees, from simply reading it to answering it, thus permitting feedback. Also, there is evidence of the PUSH notifications being effective in communications between professionals. The objective of this study is to compare the effect of the implementation of a monitoring system, goal to achieve, on physical activity in overweight and obese adults. A clinical three-armed assay has been established to permit an evaluation of the effectiveness of implementing PUSH notifications in the actions orientated towards improving body composition through the establishment of dietary patterns and an increase in physical activity. Participants (n=90) will be recruited through outpatient from private clinics in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain, as well as through community presentations. Overweight or obese and sedentary adult will be randomly assigned into three groups. For 6 months, all of the adults shall follow the same diet with an identical distribution of macronutrients. There will be a weekly check up of weight, fat, body water and muscle mass for all of them. The status of the number of steps in Accupedo is also checked every week.

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