Digital coaching strategies to facilitate behavioral change in type 2 diabetes: a systematic review

Context: In this systematic review, we focus on the clinical impact of
digital tools for providing health coaching, education, and facilitating
behavior in patients with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. Our approach was
designed to provide insights for clinicians and health care systems that
are considering adopting such digital tools. This dataset provides summary
information related to the systematic review.  Evidence
Acquisition: We searched the CINAHL, Scopus, and Ovid/MEDLINE databases
using PRISMA guidelines for studies that reported digital coaching
strategies for management and prevention of type 2 diabetes published from
January 2014 to June 2019. Articles were reviewed by 2 independent blinded
reviewers. Twenty-one articles met inclusion criteria. Evidence
Synthesis: We found that 20 of 21 studies in our analysis showed
statistically significant improvements in at least one measure of diabetes
control including HbA1c, weight loss, fasting blood glucose, and BMI.
Studies that reported weight loss percentage from baseline at 1 year
reported values ranging from −3.04% to −8.98%, similar to outcomes with
traditional coaching in the Diabetes Prevention Program (N = 4).
Additionally, all studies that included a comparison group of in-person or
telephone-based coaching showed statistically better or similar outcomes
in the digital coaching group (N = 5). Conclusions: The evidence reported
in this systematic review suggests that digital health coaching offers a
promising strategy for long-term management and prevention of type 2
diabetes in diverse populations with similar benefits to in-person or
telephone-based health coaching. We argue that, with the potential to
treat large numbers of individuals in diverse geographic locations,
digital coaching offers a promising solution to the rapid increase in
diabetes prevalence.