Lifestyle action plan plus mobile monitoring can help patients

Prevention medicine specialist Bonnie Spring, PhD, says physicians can feel overwhelmed by the limited time they have to help patients change unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. But she said doctors can help with improvements by recommending that patients eat more fruits and vegetables, decrease their sedentary leisure time and then monitor their progress using mobile technology, such as a smartphone. That approach led patients to improve healthy behaviors and sustain those changes after 20 weeks, said a study in the May 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Spring was lead author. The message for physicians “is that this can be done. You don’t have to be hopeless about it,” said Spring, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. If further research supports the study’s findings, using mobile technology to help monitor and change patients’ lifestyle behaviors could potentially revolutionize what can be accomplished in medicine and public health, said William T. Riley, PhD, program director in the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.