BACKGROUND
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) emerges worldwide and is closely associated with short- and long-term health issues in women and their offspring, such as pregnancy and birth complications respectively comorbidities, Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) as well as cardiovascular disease (CD). Against this background mobile health applications (mHealth-Apps) do open up new possibilities to improve the management of GDM clearly.
OBJECTIVE
Since there is – to our knowledge – no systematic literature review published, which focusses on the effectiveness of specific mHealth-Apps on clinical health-related short and long-term outcomes of mother and child, we conducted these much-needed analyses.
METHODS
Data sources: A systematic literature search in Medline (Pubmed), Cochrane Library, Embase, CINAHL and Web of Science was performed including full text publications since 2008 up to date. An additional manual search in references and Google Scholar was conducted subsequently.
Study Eligibility Criteria: Women diagnosed with GDM using specific mHealth-Apps during pregnancy compared to control groups, which met main clinical parameters and outcomes in GDM management as well as maternity and offspring care.
Study appraisal and synthesis methods: Study quality was assessed and rated “strong”, “moderate” or “weak” by using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) tool. Study results were strongly categorized by outcomes; an additional qualitative summary was assessed.
Study selection: Overall, n= 114 studies were analyzed, n= 46 duplicates were removed, n=5 studies met the eligible criteria and n=1 study was assessed by manual search subsequently. In total, n=6 publications, analyzing n=408 GDM patients in the interventional and n=405 women diagnosed with GDM in the control groups, were included. These studies were divided into n=5 two-arm randomized controlled trials (RCT) and n=1 controlled clinical trial (CCT).
RESULTS
Distinct improvements in clinical parameters and outcomes, such as fasting blood glucoses (FBG), 2-hour postprandial blood glucoses (PBG), off target blood glucose measurements (OTBG), delivery modes and patient compliance were analyzed in GDM patients using specific mHealth-Apps compared to matched control groups.
CONCLUSIONS
mHealth-Apps clearly improve clinical outcomes in management of GDM effectively. More studies need to be done more in detail.
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