ABSTRACT
Intensive lifestyle interventions are the first-line approach to effectively treat obesity, typically relying on in-person contact between patients and interventionists. However, several barriers exist to in-person obesity treatment, including travel time, cost, scheduling conflicts, and the burden of attending in-person sessions. Remotely delivered interventions aim to overcome these barriers, improve cost-effectiveness, and increase accessibility to behavioral weight loss programs. Mobile health (mHealth) technology can aid communication between interventionists and patients via phone calls, email, text messages, and videoconferencing; and facilitate remote and real-time collection of objective data via smartphone apps, fitness trackers, Internet-connected scales, and other devices. Indeed, mHealth approaches facilitate multi-component interventions that may facilitate adherence and enhance long-term weight management, though the current evidence is limited, particularly for entirely remotely delivered interventions. The integrity and continuity of communication between the patient and interventionist, as well as the interventionist's ability to customize intervention delivery based on mHealth data, appear to be important in remotely delivered interventions. In recent years, Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs) have more systematically integrated mHealth data into personalized multi-component interventions that aim to maximize efficacy while minimizing resource utilization. This approach offers a framework to move the mHealth field forward and is a worthy area of study.
