ReviewMayo Clinic proceedings. Digital health2025
How is Engagement Defined Across Health Care Services and Technology Companies? A Systematic Review.
Review in Mayo Clinic proceedings. Digital health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mobile App Engagement and Pain Outcomes Among Primary Care Chronic Pain Patients Who Engage in Hazardous Drinking: A Pilot Study.Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings · 2026Article
- Strategies to Increase Patients' Adherence to Digital Therapeutics for Musculoskeletal Diseases: A Narrative Review.Yonsei medical journal · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: To systematically examine how digital health startups define and operationalize engagement in the post- coronavirus disease environment (2020-2025). Patients and Methods: Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines adapted for web-based literature, we systematically reviewed publicly available information from digital health startups founded or significantly operating between 2020-2025. We extracted engagement definitions from company websites, white papers, blog posts, and press releases. Definitions were coded by type (explicit, implicit, or nondefinition) and dimensional focus (behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social). Inter-rater reliability was assessed using Cohen's κ (κ=0.82). We conducted this systematic review from April 20, 2025, to May 21, 2025. Results: We analyzed 64 engagement definitions from 30 digital health startups. Only 18.8% (n=12) were explicit definitions with clear measurement criteria, whereas 45.3% (n=29) were implicit definitions and 35.9% (n=23) were nondefinitions that mentioned engagement without defining it. The behavioral dimension dominated (64.1%, n=41), followed by social (28.1%, n=18), cognitive (21.9%, n=14), and affective dimensions (17.2%, n=11). Statistical analysis revealed significant associations between definition type and dimensional focus ( Conclusion: Digital health startups predominantly use implicit or undefined engagement concepts with a strong behavioral focus. The proposed taxonomy and maturity model provide frameworks for standardizing engagement definitions across the digital health ecosystem, potentially improving measurement consistency, facilitating more meaningful comparisons between solutions, and establishing a baseline for evaluating effectiveness.
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.