Ecological Momentary Interventions: Incorporating Mobile Technology Into Psychosocial and Health Behavior Treatments

By Kristin E. Heron, Joshua M. Smyth. British Journal of Health Psychology, 2009

1,329 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose Psychosocial and health behavior treatments and therapies can be extended beyond traditional research or clinical settings by using mobile technology to deliver interventions to individuals as they go about their daily lives. These Ecological Momentary Interventions [EMI] are treatments that are provided to people during their everyday lives (i.e., in real time) and in natural settings (i.e., real world). The goal of the present review is to synthesize and critique mobile technology-based EMI aimed at improving health behaviors and psychological and physical symptoms. Methods Twenty-seven interventions using palmtop computers or mobile phones to deliver ambulatory treatment for smoking cessation, weight loss, anxiety, diabetes management, eating disorders, alcohol use, and healthy eating and physical activity were identified. Results There is evidence that EMI can be successfully delivered, are accepted by patients, and are efficacious for treating a variety of health behaviors and physical and psychological symptoms. Limitations of the existing literature were identified and recommendations and considerations for research design, sample characteristics, measurement, statistical analyses, and clinical implementation are discussed. Conclusions Mobile technology-based EMI can be effectively implemented as interventions for a variety of health behaviors and psychological and physical symptoms. Future research should integrate the assessment and intervention capabilities of mobile technology to create dynamically and individually tailored EMI that are ecologically sensitive.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, General Health Professions

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b6732f04b6cae542122da2073ece2a7bfc6865a8

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Citations in the corpus

Mental Health Smartphone Apps: Review and Evidence-Based Recommendations for Future Developments (2016, positive): “Heron and Smyth [217] call health apps that use real-time engagement “ecological momentary interventions,” and they present evidence for the efficacy of such apps in psychosocial applications.”
An Actor-Critic Contextual Bandit Algorithm for Personalized Interventions using Mobile Devices (2014, background): “While EMA itself is not considered as an effective intervention to reduce smoking, we have the option to provide an ecological momentary intervention (EMI, [18]) such as urge-surfing [4].”
Smartphone-Based Recognition of States and State Changes in Bipolar Disorder Patients (2015, background): “A number of other approaches have looked at incorporating Ecological Momentary Assessments in order to gather patient state at opportune times [5] specifically for anxiety and eating disorders [6] and also provide Ecological Momentary Interventions .”
Recommendations for policy and practice of telepsychotherapy and e-mental health in Europe and beyond. (2020, background): “As a next step, ecological momentary intervention (EMI; Heron & Smyth, 2010) can expand this monitoring to an active intervention approach in real-time and in naturalistic settings.”
Mobile medical and health apps: state of the art, concerns, regulatory control and certification (2014, background): “Not all content may benefit all users, and getting users to download and engage with mobile apps is an art [1].”
Ambulatory Assessment: New adventures in characterizing dynamic processes (2016, positive): “An increasing number of reviews have addressed the topic of using AA for intervention (e.g., Adibi, 2015; Heron & Smyth, 2010; Kumar et al., 2013).”
Harnessing Context Sensing to Develop a Mobile Intervention for Depression (2011, background): “While such interventions have been explored with regard to health behaviors and severe mental illness (eg, bipolar disorder [14]), recent reviews reveal no such work in unipolar depression [15,16].”
The phenomenology of weight stigma in everyday life (2014, background): “Such interventions could themselves be delivered in ‘real-time’ during daily life (i.e., Ecological Momentary Interventions; see Heron & Smyth, 2010; Smyth & Heron, 2012).”
Smartphone Ownership and Interest in Mobile Applications to Monitor Symptoms of Mental Health Conditions (2014, neutral): “The ability of smartphones is not limited to data collection, but also creates the potential for mobile interventions as a future modality of treatment in mental health [25].”
Behavioral Intervention Technologies: Evidence review and recommendations for future research (2010, positive): “Given that this literature is limited and of variable quality, it is premature to make any definitive conclusions regarding the efficacy of mobile BITs [39].”
State mindfulness, self-regulation, and emotional experience in everyday life. (2016, background): “Future research should try to combine the present approach with ecological momentary interventions (EMIs; Heron & Smyth, 2010).”
The Experience Sampling Method on Mobile Devices (2017, background): “In their review of Ecological Momentary Interventions, Heron and Smyth (2010) found a similar large difference in study duration and urge researchers to find a “balance between study duration and intervention frequency.””
Design of an mHealth App for the Self-management of Adolescent Type 1 Diabetes: A Pilot Study (2012, methodology): “They also recommended the use of ecological momentary interventions that are dynamically and individually tailored and ecologically sensitive [18].”