Principal Findings
SECONDARY
mHealth and its applications have shown increasing promise in enhancing and maintaining PA levels among the public [In addition to the significant improvement in the average weekly step count among the intervention group, the impact of the intervention was encouraging. Our findings showed an increase of 1097 steps/week with a large effect size (Our study examined the effect of using text messages combined with self-monitoring to promote PA in the workplace. All of the study participants were full-time employees of an academic institution, where most of the employees have desk work with minimal PA. Most of the previous RCT studies on promoting PA using mHealth focused on the general population [In terms of establishing the difference in PA levels within each group, no significant variations were identified based on the participant’s gender or age group. Such data may seem to contradict the conventional findings, which indicate that men are more active than females and that the younger population is more active than the elderly population [Our results indicate the effectiveness of mHealth in improving PA during a 3-month follow-up period. However, the long-term sustainability of the improved impact and the retention of the magnitude of the effect in PA were not investigated. Other RCT studies have evaluated the long-term impact of mHealth interventions and demonstrated a sustained improvement in PA for up to 2 years, with the largest magnitude of improvement in interventions with less than 4 months of follow-up [Our intervention was relatively cost-effective considering the effect size of the PA level and the anticipated benefits of maintaining an active lifestyle. The automated text message dissemination to the participants required low overhead, with a calculated cost of Aus $0.10 (US $0.0673) per message (Aus $18 [US $12.11] per participant). Other studies reported a range of Aus $0.10 (US $0.0673) to Aus $0.30 (US $0.201) per message [As part of our intervention, we used a combined approach to promote PA through text messages and advised participants to self-monitor their weekly step count. Setting goals on a weekly or biweekly basis has been found to be more effective than setting daily goals [The baseline level of PA was lower than the minimum recommended level of PA associated with health benefits [In examining the secondary outcome, we found that participants effectively reduced their BMI significantly during the intervention, which is consistent with related research. For instance, a large systematic review study found a significant association between BMI and systolic blood pressure [