Digital Health Interventions for Weight Management in Older Adults with Overweight or Obesity: A Scoping Review
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Published on: May 31, 2021
Lin Li1, Keke Ren1, Huanhuan Huang2
1Department of Nursing, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, People's Republic of China.
Objective:
This study aimed to systematically map the application of digital health interventions (DHIs) in weight management among older adults with overweight or obesity, identify knowledge gaps from the perspective of this population, and provide targeted evidence for the design and implementation of future age-friendly interventions.
Methods:
This scoping review followed the framework proposed by Arksey and O'Malley and was reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). A systematic search was conducted in six databases-PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and PsycINFO-from database inception to May 31, 2026. A total of 16 studies were ultimately included.
Results:
The included studies were published between 2012 and 2026 and involved a total of 1854 older adults with overweight or obesity; most studies were conducted in the United States. Regarding methodological quality, 25.00% of studies were high-quality RCTs, 31.25% were of moderate-to-high quality, and 43.75% were of poor quality owing to single-arm designs. DHIs used diverse technological carriers, which were categorized into communication modalities, sensing and monitoring devices, user-facing applications, and management platforms. Intervention content was diverse, predominantly comprising combined dietary and exercise interventions and supplemented by multiple BCTs, including action planning, instruction on how to perform the behavior, self-monitoring, feedback on behavior, and social support. Outcomes were multidimensional, encompassing objective clinical and physiological measures, physical function and frailty measures, health behavior measures, patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and psychosocial measures, and feasibility and acceptability measures.
Conclusions:
DHIs for weight management in older adults with overweight or obesity are characterized by diverse technological carriers, multifaceted intervention content, and multidimensional outcomes. Future efforts should focus on participatory age-friendly design involving older adults, development of a core outcome set (COS), and integration of emerging technologies to improve the precision, sustainability, and scalability of interventions.
