Better4All Personalized Intervention Pilot Study

The BETTER4U project (Preventing obesity through Biologically and bEhaviorally Tailored inTERventions for you) is funded by the European Union (EU) and involves an international consortium consisting of 28 partners across Europe, Israel, and Australia. The project started in November 2023 and will run until October 2027. The main aim of BETTER4U is to improve weight management through a tailor-made intervention, the "BETTER4ALL personalized intervention", using modern monitoring tools and artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning (ML) practices. In the context of the BETTER4U project, the present Pilot Study aims to a) evaluate the usability, feasibility and acceptability of the BETTER4U mobile application ("BETTER4U App") and Intervention Platform that will be used to monitor and collect data from participants in the BETTER4ALL personalized intervention (randomized controlled trial; RCT) and b) collect data to evaluate and improve the BETTER4U causal AI models for the prevention of weight gain, before deploying them at large scale, as well as test and identify the optimal ways of delivering the AI-based interventions to the participants. The study will be conducted in seven sites in Cyprus, France, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. The BETTER4All Pilot Study will be a longitudinal, correlational, observational study, including a total of n=490 participants, equally distributed among the seven sites (i.e. n=70 per site). Specifically, n=60 (± 3-5) "general population" participants (henceforth: "end-users" of the wearables and the BETTER4U App) and n=10 (± 3-5) healthcare or other types of providers (henceforth: potential "implementers" of the BETTER4U intervention) will constitute each site's sample. The study will involve the following two components: a) the administration of the wearables (smartwatches) to the "end-users" and their registration to and training on the BETTER4U App, to be used for a total duration of three weeks (21 days