Usability and Effectiveness of eHealth and mHealth Interventions That Support Self-Management and Health Care Transition in Adolescents and Young Adults With Chronic Disease: Systematic Review.

As more young people with chronic conditions grow into adulthood, helping them take charge of their own health and move smoothly from paediatric to adult care has become a pressing question. This systematic review looked at digital tools, apps, texts, websites, and web-based games, designed to support that self-management and transition process in adolescents and young adults with chronic disease. Across 22 studies, these tools covered things like medication reminders, symptom tracking, goal setting, education, incentives, and communication with providers or peers.

Most users found them convenient and easy to use, but engagement tended to fade over time, and barriers like literacy, language, and inconsistent phone access got in the way for some. What stands out is how much preferences varied between individuals, and the review is honest that solid evidence on whether these tools actually improve health outcomes remains limited, so feasibility and appeal don't yet translate into proven effectiveness.

If you're a young person managing a long-term health condition, you've probably encountered apps or text reminders meant to help you track symptoms, take medication, or communicate with your care team. This review pulled together 22 studies looking at exactly these kinds of digital tools for adolescents and young adults, especially around the tricky period of moving from children's to adult healthcare services. The encouraging part is that most young people found these tools convenient, accessible, and easy to use.

But interest often faded with time, people got tired of them, found some features (like uploading videos) too time-consuming, or ran into barriers like not always having phone access or difficulty with the reading level required. Importantly, this review couldn't confirm whether these tools actually improve health outcomes, only that people were generally receptive to using them. What worked also varied a lot from person to person, in terms of message style, content, and whether they wanted to connect with peers or providers.

This tells us these tools show promise for engagement, not proven clinical benefit yet.

This is a summary of research, not medical advice. Talk to your own healthcare provider about anything affecting your care.

For clinicians involved in supporting young people through the transition from paediatric to adult services, this review addresses a common question: do digital self-management tools genuinely help, or are they just convenient add-ons? Synthesising 22 studies (the abstract does not specify the designs used within them), the review found interventions spanning medication reminders, symptom tracking, goal setting, education, incentives, and communication features, categorised into six thematic areas. The decisive contribution here is about usability and engagement rather than clinical effectiveness. Adolescents and young adults generally found these tools feasible and accessible, but engagement declined over time, with barriers including time-consuming tasks, inconsistent phone access, literacy and language issues, and mismatched expectations.

Preferences for message style and features (peer contact, provider contact, disease-specific content) varied considerably between individuals. The key limitation for practice is that the review explicitly states there remains limited data on whether these interventions actually improve self-management skills or transition outcomes. So while this evidence usefully informs how such tools might be designed or refined for uptake, involving young people early and tailoring features, it does not establish that any of them produce measurable clinical benefit, and should not be read as validation of a particular app or platform.