TAILORED MOBILE PHONE APP PROMOTING DAILY PHYSICAL ACTIVITY: A RANDOMIZED TRIAL

Abstract

Background/Objective: Do adults better adhere to daily physical activity when they were provided a personalized program an App delivered compared to single pedometer feedback?  An experimental study including randomized parallel group with or without the personalized program aimed at assessing the effect of a PA App designed to enhance daily physical activity in healthy adults. Methods: The participants were 30 adults (12 men and 18 women), aged between 35 and 60 years (45.33 ± 7.6). They were randomly assigned to a control group (CG, N=15), or to an experimental group (EG, N=15). Participants from the EG received their program from an app linked to a web-platform and benefited from daily walking step-count feedback, individually adapted goals per week, behavioral advices and health information. Participants from the CG only benefited of daily walking step-count on their smartphones. Results: The primary outcomes measures were number of walking steps per week; they were collected at baseline, week 6 and week 12. The secondary outcome was adherence based on the number of weeks the participants connected their smartphone to the web-platform. Non-parametric statistics indicated that (i) the EG maintained their adherence to the program more than the CG and (ii) the number of steps walked by participants from the EG increased significantly. Conclusion: Adults adhere better to daily physical activity when they benefit from a personalized program an app delivered.