Your "Well, Duh!" Moment of the Day

ALW65

Hi All - I just had to share this story that came across a daily email summarizing trends in healthcare. Some researchers back in 2005 looked at using a PDA to help folks lose weight. Results looked promising - sure, it was 2005 and they were still working with PDAs. Here's the funny part - now they're doing a follow-up study to see if they'll have success with smartphones.

Hello??? Did they do any preliminary work to see if there are any online fitness sites that track diet/exercise and can be followed through a cell phone??? Hope this isn't funded by our tax dollar through NIH too! :sad:

Here you go:

FROM THE DECISION HEALTH DAILY SITE http://daily.decisionhealth.com/Articles/Detail.aspx?id=511858
Major clinical trial for mobile diet-diary app looks good
March 20, 2012by: Roy Edroso

Here's another in a series of promising mobile health outreaches.

We've heard about cellphone-based compliance programs such as Massachusetts' obstetric texting, and seen tons of articles at smart-people sites like Big Think ("The Future of Medicine? Your Smartphone"), Gizmag ("App turns smartphone into a medical monitor"), and the New York Times ("Monitoring Your Health with Mobile Devices").

But it's especially encouraging to hear mobile tech success stories from research events such as this year's EPINPAM (Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism) Scientific Sessions, where University of Pittsburgh researchers reported on their NIH "Improving Self-Monitoring in Weight Loss With Technology" clinical trial, which started back in 2005.

The researchers tested standard behavioral treatment (SBT) for weight loss, using handwritten diaries, PDAs with feedback, or PDAs without feedback. (Remember, it was 2005 -- people still used terms like "PDA.")

The PDA-with-feedback group would get messages that might, for example, "commend them on how well they're doing with the calories," one researcher told theheart.org, "but cautioning them that they're getting close to their fat-gram goal."

"Those using the PDAs were significantly more likely than those writing out their diet entries to adhere to the trial's self-monitoring goals," said theheart.org. And the feedback helped even more.

Compliance diminished over time -- but there's reason to believe that this would be less of an issue in our current era of ubiquitous smartphone use.

"We're doing a study right now that uses a smartphone," said one researcher, "so the person has [only] one device, they charge it regularly, and they keep it with them all the time—so that overcomes some of the barriers. And today we can communicate with the person in real time, and change feedback messages more frequently."

castadiva

Oh good lord. Which ivory tower have they been living in for the last seven years?