Evaluation of Web-Based Digital Intervention to improve health outcomes of older adults: A secondary data analysis. (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The health of ageing populations is amongst the top challenges facing global health systems. As such, research focusing on how to promote positive health behaviours in an ageing population is of paramount importance. The use of mobile health (mHealth) approaches has been found to be effective in prompting changes across a range of health behaviours and in various populations and has been identified as a potentially valuable tool to enhance health behaviours amongst older adults. OBJECTIVE The present sought to explore the efficacy and acceptability of a personalised mHealth application designed for older adults in terms of how it affected their well-being, mental and physical health, and relationship with food. METHODS This study is a secondary data analysis of the outcomes of real-world Holly Health users who signed up for the Holly Health program between August 2022 to January 2023. RESULTS Results showed that post-intervention, self-reported ratings of self-confidence, energy, mindfulness, health mindset, and short-and-long-term mindset all improved. Furthermore, the personalised mHealth application showed a good level of acceptability amongst the participants. CONCLUSIONS These results demonstrate that engaging with a digital health intervention can help improve several aspects of physical and mental health and adds to existing evidence highlighting the need for effective and accessible interventions to promote healthy ageing. CLINICALTRIAL The current analysis was approved by the London South Bank University Research Ethics Committee (Ref: ETH2223-0097) and was pre-registered on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/rbk36).