Abstract
Modern-day society has moved towards a more sedentary lifestyle. Advances in technology and changes in habits in our daily lives have led a large part of the population towards a spiralling sedentary lifestyle and obesity. The main objective of this work is to develop and subsequently assess a mobile app, named DietApp, that provides advice about obtaining a healthy diet according to age, clinical history and physical condition. DietApp has been developed for iOS and Android systems, and a survey comprising 7 simple questions enabled the app to be evaluated on a user level by taking into account aspects such as its usefulness and ease of use. DietApp was assessed by 150 Spanish individuals between 18 and 69 years of age, and 84% of them thought it was easy to use. 80% of users also considered the dietary suggestions provided by the app to be very useful while 62% were of the opinion that it is very useful in general. All of them would recommend the app to other users. During the six months when the app was used, any dietary excess or shortcomings were corrected in 72% of those interviewed. A mobile app has been created that is easy to use and attractive, providing personalised suggestions according to illness that are useful for the individual.
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Acknowledgements
This research has been partially supported by the European Commission under the project ICT-24-2016–732375 named “FocusLocus: ADHD management Gaming System for educational achievement and social inclusion”, by National Funding from the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through the UID/EEA/500008/2013 Project, by the Government of the Russian Federation, Grant 074-U01, and by Finep, with resources from Funttel, Grant No. 01.14.0231.00, under the Centro de Referência em Radiocomunicações - CRR project of the Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações (Inatel), Brazil.
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de la Torre Díez, I., Garcia-Zapirain, B., López-Coronado, M. et al. A New mHealth App for Monitoring and Awareness of Healthy Eating: Development and User Evaluation by Spanish Users. J Med Syst 41, 109 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-017-0753-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-017-0753-0