Economic and health impacts of the Change4Life Food Scanner app: Findings from a randomized pilot and feasibility study.

Introduction: The UK Government developed the Change4Life Food Scanner app to provide families with engaging feedback on the nutritional content of packaged foods. There is a lack of research exploring the cost-effectiveness of dietary health promotion apps. Methods: Through stakeholder engagement, a conceptual model was developed, outlining the pathway by which the Food Scanner app leads to proximal and distal outcomes. The conceptual model informed the development of a pilot randomized controlled trial which investigated the feasibility and acceptability of evaluating clinical outcomes in children and economic effectiveness of the Food Scanner app through a cost-consequence analysis. Parents of 4-11 years-olds ( Results: 64 participants (51%) completed the study (intervention: Discussion: Modest mean differences between study arms may have been due to the exploration of distal outcomes over a short follow-up period. The study was also disrupted due to the coronavirus pandemic, which may have confounded healthcare resource data. Although measures adopted were deemed feasible, the study highlighted difficulties in obtaining data on app development and maintenance costs, as well as the importance of economic modeling to predict long-term outcomes that may not be reliably captured over the short-term. Clinical trial registration: https://osf.io/, identifier 62hzt.