ReviewDigital health
Quality assessment of smartphone fitness apps used to increase physical activity level and improve general health in adults: A systematic review.
Review in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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
4 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Arabic Wellness Apps in the MENA Region and Saudi Arabia: Current Evidence and Systematic Evaluation.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Infusing behavior science into large language models for activity coaching.PLOS digital health · 2024Article
- Typical everyday movements cause specific patterns in heart rate.Frontiers in physiology · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Mobile exercise apps for smartphones have been used with intervention measures to increase physical activity. This study aimed to identify and evaluate the quality of fitness apps for smartphones that were used to increase the level of physical activity and improve the overall health of healthy adults. Methods: The systematic review was performed in five electronic databases EMBASE, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Academic Research Premier e Cochrane Reviews, and Trials. The search terms were grouped into three categories according to the principles of population, intervention, comparison, and outcomes. The following includes examples of the group terms: population (healthy adults), intervention (smartphone apps), and outcomes (physical activity level). Results: Of the 3924 potential articles, 74 were read for full-text analysis. Only seven studies were included in the review. The methodological evaluation of the studies and the apps' quality showed that only one study and one app were evaluated with good quality. All studies used a type of application to improve the level of physical activity (measured by the number of daily steps), reporting an increase and improvement in some general health indices (calorie expenditure, weight, BMI) in healthy adults, regardless of frequency and duration of intervention and applications. Conclusion: We cannot say that the use of smartphone applications improves the level of physical activity and general health. The low methodological quality of the studies and the possibility to evaluate the applications used (Mars Scale) due to the lack of technical standardization presented in the studies, despite the app used showing positive results in all studies.
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.