Oral presentation: 'Influences on uptake and engagement with health and wellbeing smartphone apps.': Centre of Behaviour Change Digital Health Conference.

Rationale: Digital behaviour change interventions, such as smartphone apps, could provide an effective and cost-effective way to improve and maintain good physical and mental health. However, the public health impact of health and wellbeing digital interventions is dependent on sufficient real-world uptake and engagement. Uptake is currently dependent largely on popularity indicators (e.g. ranking and user ratings on app stores), which emerging evidence suggests may be negatively associated with evidence-based content. Furthermore, rapid discontinuation of use is very common. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify factors that influence the uptake and engagement with health and wellbeing apps to inform new approaches to promoting the use of effective digital behaviour change interventions.
Aims: To synthesise what is known about influences on uptake and engagement with health and wellbeing smartphone apps amongst adults.
Methodology: A systematic review including quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies focused on health and wellbeing smartphone apps reporting on uptake and engagement behaviour among adults. Studies identified through a systematic search in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Scopus, Cochrane library databases, DBLP and ACM Digital library are being screened independently by two authors. Disagreement will be resolved through discussion with a third reviewer. Data extraction will be completed by the first author and checked for accuracy by another author and will include: characteristics of the studies and the sample, study design and methods used, objectives, outcomes measured, or topics covered, findings and quality appraisal. A narrative synthesis of the findings will be structured on the components of the COM-B behaviour change model, a framework that will help to understand the behaviour related to uptake and engagement of health and wellbeing smartphone apps.
Analysis/results: The screening process is currently underway and key findings will be presented at the conference.
Conclusions: The findings of this review will provide a framework of factors that affect uptake and engagement with health and wellbeing smartphone apps. This review will inform future research as well as stakeholders in public health and policymakers, digital behaviour change intervention developers and providers on optimisation of health and wellbeing smartphone app uptake and engagement.