Real-world impact of physical activity reward-driven digital app use on cardiometabolic and cardiovascular disease incidence

The lack of effective tools available to health providers for enhancing patient physical activity prompts this study to examine the real-world impact of a physical activity reward-driven app on health outcomes, utilizing Electronic Health Records (EHR) data from Israel's largest healthcare organization.

Conducting a retrospective cohort study, we matched app-users to non-users based on demographic and clinical characteristics.

App-users have a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease (HR 0.95), stroke (HR 0.91), and type 2 diabetes (HR 0.82) compared to non-app users. Higher levels of physical activity among app users further reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease (HR 0.87), stroke (HR 0.84), and type 2 diabetes (HR 0.75) compared with non-app user. However, engagement in mild physical activity, as measured by step count, does not differ from non- users in the incidence of these conditions.

These findings highlight the potential of app-based interventions to promote higher levels of physical activity and mitigate major vascular and metabolic illnesses.