With rapid technology advancements and increased usage of handheld devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, people's reliance on these devices has grown beyond their utility as a means to communicate. Today, these devices are also helping people make healthier lifestyle choices regarding nutrition through different dietary applications, thereby saving expensive visits to doctors and nutritionists. These applications provide awareness about nutritional habits and keep track of a person's physical activity for planning their dietary needs . However, the selection or development of the dietary application for catering individual needs, and implementing successful interventions toward behavioral change is a challenging process . Therefore, the following research exercise aims to review existing nutritional applications at length to highlight key features and problems that enhance or undermine an application's usability and build the case for a generalized implementation that can cater to most people's needs. The findingsfrom this analysis will help to inform the future development of more effective mobile apps . Furthermore, it will also help develop standard guidelines by keeping in view dietician's and researcher's perspective .
Obesity is known to lower the quality of life substantially. It is often associated with increased chances of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular problems, different types of cancers, etc. Evidence suggests that diet-related mobile applications play a vital role in assisting an individual in making healthier choices and keeping track of food intake . However, due to an abundance of similar applications, it becomes pertinent to evaluate each of them in terms of functionality, usability, and possible design issues to truly determine state-of-the-art solutions for the future. Since these applications involve implementing multiple user requirements and recommendations from different dietitians, the evaluation becomes quite complex . Therefore, this study aims to review existing dietary applications at length to highlight key features and problems that enhance or undermine an application's usability . For this purpose, we have examined the published literature from various scientific databases of the CINAHL, Science Direct, and PUBMED. Out of our findings, fifty-six primary studies met our inclusion criteria after filtering out titles, abstracts, and full text. A total of 35 apps are analyzed from the selected studies. Our detailed analysis concluded the comprehensiveness of freely available mHealth applications from users and dietitians' frames of reference . Furthermore, we have also specified potential future challenges and stated recommendations to help develop clinically accurate diet-related applications .
R
With rapid technology advancements and increased usage of handheld devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, people's reliance on these devices has grown beyond their utility as a means to communicate. Today, these devices are also helping people make healthier lifestyle choices regarding nutrition through different dietary applications, thereby saving expensive visits to doctors and nutritionists. These applications provide awareness about nutritional habits and keep track of a person's physical activity for planning their dietary needs
Obesity is known to lower the quality of life substantially. It is often associated with increased chances of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular problems, different types of cancers, etc. Evidence suggests that diet-related mobile applications play a vital role in assisting an individual in making healthier choices and keeping track of food intake
R
the selection or development of the dietary application for catering individual needs, and implementing successful interventions toward behavioral change is a challenging process
due to an abundance of similar applications, it becomes pertinent to evaluate each of them in terms of functionality, usability, and possible design issues to truly determine state-of-the-art solutions for the future. Since these applications involve implementing multiple user requirements and recommendations from different dietitians, the evaluation becomes quite complex
R
the following research exercise
this study
R
nutritional
dietary
R
and build the case for a generalized implementation that can cater to most people's needs. The findingsfrom this analysis will help to inform the future development of more effective mobile apps
. For this purpose, we have examined the published literature from various scientific databases of the CINAHL, Science Direct, and PUBMED. Out of our findings, fifty-six primary studies met our inclusion criteria after filtering out titles, abstracts, and full text. A total of 35 apps are analyzed from the selected studies. Our detailed analysis concluded the comprehensiveness of freely available mHealth applications from users and dietitians' frames of reference
R
it will also help develop standard guidelines by keeping in view dietician's and researcher's perspective
we have also specified potential future challenges and stated recommendations to help develop clinically accurate diet-related applications