Effectiveness of mHealth Interventions Aimed at Promoting Physical Activity and Reducing Sedentary Behavior on...

Mobile health (mHealth) technologies have gained popularity and may play a key role in promoting health-related behaviors. However, the impact of mHealth interventions on work-related outcomes remains unclear.

We aimed to provide an overview of the effectiveness of mHealth interventions designed to encourage physical activity and decrease sedentary behavior on work-related outcomes.

A search was conducted in MEDLINE, Web of Science Core Collection, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Ichushi-Web for all publications up to September 12, 2025, without language or date restrictions. We included studies which (1) investigated the impact of mHealth interventions promoting physical activity and reducing sedentary behavior on work-related outcomes such as absenteeism, presenteeism, work productivity, work performance, and workability; (2) were designed as a randomized controlled trial or nonrandomized study of interventions; (3) were conducted among workers; and (4) were published as full-text original articles in Japanese or English. Two researchers independently conducted the screening of titles and abstracts, followed by a full-text review to confirm study eligibility and extract the data. We assessed the risk of bias using the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias tool for randomized trials (RoB 2) and the Risk Of Bias In Nonrandomized Studies of Interventions (ROBINS-I). Findings were narratively synthesized.

In total, 4022 records were identified from databases and other sources. After removing duplicates, 3631 studies were screened, and 17 studies (12 randomized controlled trials and 5 nonrandomized studies of interventions) met the inclusion criteria. Of the 17 eligible studies with 18,805 participants, 12 showed a favorable effect direction on ≥1 work-related outcome, but the majority exhibited a high or critical risk of bias, raising concerns about the quality of the research. There was considerable heterogeneity across studies.

Scientific evidence suggests that health promotion efforts that incorporate mHealth components to encourage physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior may have a favorable impact on work-related outcomes. However, the low methodological quality of the studies and their high heterogeneity due to the participant characteristics, intervention content, use of diverse work-related assessment tools, and different follow-up periods make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of the interventions. This review is the first to comprehensively synthesize evidence on the impact of mHealth interventions on work-related outcomes, extending prior reviews that primarily focused on traditional workplace-based interventions without mHealth components. This review also contributes to the field by offering guidance for future studies, including the potential value of megastudy designs that evaluate multiple interventions within the same population over the same period on the same outcomes. As a practical implication, these findings suggest that mHealth technologies may serve as a complementary strategy for supporting occupational health and productivity.