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A New mHealth App for Monitoring and Awareness of Healthy Eating: Development and User Evaluation by Spanish Users

  • Mobile & Wireless Health
  • Published:
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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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Signal Theory and Communications, and Telematics Engineering, University of Valladolid, Paseo de Belén, 15, 47011, Valladolid, Spain

    Isabel de la Torre Díez & Miguel López-Coronado

  2. University of Deusto, Avenida de las Universidades 24, 48007, Bilbao, Spain

    Begoña Garcia-Zapirain

  3. National Institute of Telecommunications (Inatel), Santa Rita do Sapucaí, MG, Brazil

    Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues

  4. Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal

    Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues

  5. University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR), Fortaleza, CE, Brazil

    Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues

  6. University ITMO, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues

  7. Emergency Department, University Clinical Hospital of Valladolid, C/. Real de Burgos, 2, 47011, Valladolid, Spain

    Carlos del Pozo Vegas

Authors
  1. Isabel de la Torre Díez
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  2. Begoña Garcia-Zapirain
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  3. Miguel López-Coronado
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  4. Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues
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  5. Carlos del Pozo Vegas
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Isabel de la Torre Díez.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The ethics board approval was obtained of the “Ethical Committee of Clinical Research of Clinic Hospital of Valladolid, Spain”.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mobile & Wireless Health.

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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

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