ArticleNPJ digital medicine2020
Indicators of retention in remote digital health studies: a cross-study evaluation of 100,000 participants.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 285 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
285 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Attrition in Digital Self-Management Interventions for Patients With Metabolic Dysfunction Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD): Mixed Methods Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Pooled it
- Inequalities in Exclusively Mobile Interventions Targeting Weight-Related Behaviors: Systematic Review of Observational Studies.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2026Pooled it
- Digital Health Interventions to Promote Physical Activity Among Adolescents: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Pooled it
- Use of Digital Health Interventions Among Forcibly Displaced People: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JAMA network open · 2025Pooled it
- Early detection of diseases causing dementia using digital navigation and gait measures: A systematic review of evidence.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Pooled it
- Potential associations between behavior change techniques and engagement with mobile health apps: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Pooled it
- Dropout Rate in Digital Health Interventions for the Prevention of Skin Cancer: Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Metaregression.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Pooled it
- Engagement and attrition with eHealth tools for remote monitoring in chronic arthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis.RMD open · 2022Pooled it
- Effectiveness, Mediators and Moderators of Remote Live vs. Pre-Recorded Physical Exercise Training for Chronic Low Back Pain.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Trial
- A Web-Based Virtual Environment Behavioral Intervention as Cardiovascular Disease and Metabolic Disease Prevention Education in Persons With HIV: Evaluation of the LEARN Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Trial
- Smartphone App-Based Survey Deployment Patterns and Longitudinal Response Rate: Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Trial
- High-Frequency, At-Home Monitoring of Drug Safety and Tolerability in Clinical Trials: Results From Studies of Fluvoxamine for COVID-19 Treatment.Clinical and translational science · 2025Trial
- Navigating recruitment and retention challenges in a social media health intervention in francophone West Africa.Health promotion international · 2025Trial
- Patient adherence and response time in electronic patient-reported outcomes: insights from three longitudinal clinical trials.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2024Trial
- Digital Self-Management Platform for Adult Asthma: Randomized Attention-Placebo Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Trial
- Viewpoint: Challenges and strategies for engaging participants in videoconferencing appointments.Contemporary clinical trials · 2024Trial
- The development and internal pilot trial of a digital physical activity and emotional well-being intervention (Kidney BEAM) for people with chronic kidney disease.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- Email-Based Recruitment Into the Health eHeart Study: Cohort Analysis of Invited Eligible Patients.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Trial
- Mobile and Web-Based Partnered Intervention to Improve Remote Access to Pain and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Management: Recruitment and Attrition in a Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Trial
- The Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of a Universal Digital Parenting Intervention Designed and Implemented During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From a Rapid-Implementation Randomized Controlled Trial Within a Cohort.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Trial
225 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Digital technologies such as smartphones are transforming the way scientists conduct biomedical research. Several remotely conducted studies have recruited thousands of participants over a span of a few months allowing researchers to collect real-world data at scale and at a fraction of the cost of traditional research. Unfortunately, remote studies have been hampered by substantial participant attrition, calling into question the representativeness of the collected data including generalizability of outcomes. We report the findings regarding recruitment and retention from eight remote digital health studies conducted between 2014-2019 that provided individual-level study-app usage data from more than 100,000 participants completing nearly 3.5 million remote health evaluations over cumulative participation of 850,000 days. Median participant retention across eight studies varied widely from 2-26 days (median across all studies = 5.5 days). Survival analysis revealed several factors significantly associated with increase in participant retention time, including (i) referral by a clinician to the study (increase of 40 days in median retention time); (ii) compensation for participation (increase of 22 days, 1 study); (iii) having the clinical condition of interest in the study (increase of 7 days compared with controls); and (iv) older age (increase of 4 days). Additionally, four distinct patterns of daily app usage behavior were identified by unsupervised clustering, which were also associated with participant demographics. Most studies were not able to recruit a sample that was representative of the race/ethnicity or geographical diversity of the US. Together these findings can help inform recruitment and retention strategies to enable equitable participation of populations in future digital health research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.