Combining mHealth and health-coaching for improving self-management in chronic care: a scoping review
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Self-management approaches are widely used to improve chronic care. In this context, health care professionals call for efficient tools to engage patients in managing their illness. Mobile health (mHealth), defined by WHO as medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, is demonstrated to enhance self-management and health-coaching as an engaging tool in supporting behaviour change. Nevertheless, it is unclear how health-coaching and mHealth can benefit from each other. OBJECTIVE: We conducted a scoping review to provide a literature-overview and identify any existing gaps in knowledge of mHealth in combination with health-coaching interventions for improving self-management in patients with chronic diseases. PATIENT INVOLVEMENT: No patients were involved in the review process. METHODS: The five-stage framework by Arksey and O'Malley was used. The review surveys; PubMed, CINAHL, Embase, Scopus, and PsycInfo. Two independent reviewers performed review selection and characterization. RESULTS: The review points at two approaches; (i) coaching used to support mHealth and (ii) mHealth as support for coaching. The findings suggest that patients prefer physical interactions to telecommunication. mHealth was primarily used to facilitate telecommunication and to monitor disease aspects. DISCUSSION: We found that mHealth and health-coaching interventions benefit from each other. The review report on a considerable unclarity in the coaching-methods and that the patients were more satisfied with physical interactions than mHealth. We suggest to prioritize human contact and to explore more personalized health technology. PRACTICAL VALUE: This scoping review can provide a framework for researchers and care providers to support discussion and introduction of new approaches and technology in self-management for patients with chronic diseases, thereby improving patients' quality of life.
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Digital interventions may reduce pain intensity and improve physical and psychosocial functioning.
“Digital solutions in the form of applications (apps) may have the potential to expand outreach of pain self-management approaches, and research has shown how digital interventions may reduce pain intensity and improve physical and psychosocial functioning.45”
From Living well with chronic pain: a 12-month randomized controlled trial revealing impact from the digital pain self-management program EPIO (2024) · cites this paper as [45]
Reviews have indicated that professionally guided digital self-management interventions may be more effective than self-guided interventions and that guided digital CBT-based programs may be more beneficial than unguided programs in terms of depression.
“Reviews have indicated that professionally guided digital self-management interventions may be more effective than self-guided interventions [23,71] and that guided digital CBT-based programs may be more beneficial than unguided programs in terms of depression [72].”
From Short-Term Findings From Testing EPIO, a Digital Self-Management Program for People Living With Chronic Pain: Randomized Controlled Trial (2023) · cites this paper as [71]
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References 34 · Cited by 65
- Authors
- Obro, L. F., Heiselberg, K., Krogh, P. G., Handberg, C., Ammentorp, J., Pihl, G. T., & Osther, P. J. S.
- Affiliations
- Aarhus University (DK)
- University of Southern Denmark (DK)
- Venue
- Patient Education and Counseling
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-04
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 680-688
- ISSN
- 0738-3991 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3093883811
- Cited by
- 65
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 3
- FWCI
- 1.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- erratum (2021-10-01)
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Patient Education and Counseling (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Southern Denmark Research Portal (University of Southern Denmark) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Denmark
- Novo Nordisk Foundation
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Chronic Disease Management Strategies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Digital Mental Health Interventions
- Keywords
- mobile health, health coaching, self-management, chronic disease, chronic care, behavior change, telecommunications, patient satisfaction, human contact, patient engagement
- MeSH terms
- Mentoring, Self-Management, Health Personnel, Humans, Quality of Life, Telemedicine
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