Principal Findings
TG, overweight or obesity
CHRONIC DISEASES
In this study, remote dietary and physical activity interventions improved dietary intake among participants with overweight or obesity, were beneficial for weight control, and had potential health benefits. The remote management system mode that included “health information collection—health assessment—guidance and feedback—follow-up” was feasible among older people and effective in this study.The key to weight control is balancing dietary intake and energy expenditure. Although focusing on weight changes, this study also analyzed the impact of a remote management mode on the behavioral changes in dietary intake and physical activity. The results indicated that after 3 months of a remote intervention, the daily total energy intake and the intake of 3 macronutrients were significantly reduced in group DPI compared with group C, and the daily fat intake was reduced in group PI compared with group C. When comparing the intake of various foods, it was found that the intake of cereals, potatoes, and oils in group DPI was significantly reduced. Compared with group C, the intake of cereal and potato foods in group PI was also significantly reduced. The remote management system based on the mode of “health information collection—health assessment—guidance and feedback—follow-up” had a relatively mature monitoring and interaction mechanism, and it provided support and encouragement to the participants to promote changes in dietary intake behavior [This study also explored the effects of remote dietary and physical activity interventions on weight management. The results indicated that, at the end of the intervention, compared with groups PI and C, the weight-related indicators of the participants in group DPI, including body weight, BMI, and waist circumference, were significantly decreased. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have evaluated the impact and effect of remote mobile technology combined with wearable devices on weight control. A systematic review and meta-analysis including 20 studies indicated that behavior-related weight management interventions using mobile health (mHealth) lifestyle self-monitoring were effective and had relatively higher adherence in the short term [In this study, remote dietary and physical activity interventions demonstrated potential health benefits, including lower blood pressure, TG, FBG, HDL-C, and HbAThis study has some strengths and weaknesses. With the help of intelligent equipment such as smartphones, remote health management can efficiently realize the remote monitoring of older users without increasing labor costs and without time and geographical constraints. These advantages cannot be ignored, but there are also some difficulties and problems. The implementation of remote management involves the use of relevant apps and intelligent monitoring equipment, which may be a problem and cause difficulty for the older population. For them, smart devices should be visually clear and personalized with simple navigation, be easily operatable, and monitor the applicability and motivation during remote health management procedures. The interface of the smartphone app used in this study was clear and convenient for the older people to operate. In addition, many methods to encourage behavior change were established in the intervention process, including web-based education, daily weight monitoring, weekly monitoring of blood pressure and blood glucose, setting goals, motivation, and timely feedback. In this study, WeChat groups were established, which helped the participants obtain social and emotional support from each other, thus improving their enthusiasm and follow-up. Since the emergence of remote medical technology, many scholars have studied the effects and prospects of remote health intervention or management as applied to individual health management, including that of children, adolescents, and adults; however, few studies have focused on the older population. This study focused on older people with overweight and obesity, and no similar study was found in China. Regarding the weaknesses, the duration of the study was only 3 months, and the sustainability of the effect after the intervention was not evaluated. There was no traditional management group in the study, so it was impossible to compare the effects between the remote management mode and traditional management mode.The results of this study can be generalized, and the remote health management mode and intervention measures adopted have relatively good practicability. Therefore, more and better-designed studies are needed to verify the effectiveness of this intervention and the sustainability of related effects and to provide ideas and references for the remote management of chronic diseases in the older population. The future development direction will be to combine remote and intelligent health care with traditional offline health management to explore the best universal health management scheme for conveniently and economically promoting the health of the older people.