Inside the ISPAH-JPAH webinar on what digital tools can and cannot do for physical activity and equity. 

On 20 May 2026, ISPAH and the Journal of Physical Activity and Health (JPAH) co-hosted a webinar built around JPAH’s October 2025 special issue on leveraging technology to advance physical activity measurement, surveillance and interventions, guest-edited by Dr Jacqueline Mair and A/Prof Elroy Aguiar. Dr George Thomas and Dr Mair co-moderated, after Prof Melody Ding, JPAH co-editor-in-chief, opened with a welcome from Prof Cathie Sherrington for ISPAH. A companion commentary from the webinar speakers, drawing on the session’s key discussions, has since been published in JPAH.

Prof Adrian Bauman set the question. “We’re getting better at measurement and not at behaviour,” he said, with most countries still off track for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Action Plan on Physical Activity targets for 2030. Dr Gregore Mielke agreed that better measurement has improved the science, but questioned the assumption underneath it, that better precision and accuracy leads to behaviour change. 

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What the data can now tell us

Three authors presented papers from the special issue.

• Prof Jasper Schipperijn’s commentary asks whether the field is ignoring context: sensors record how much someone moved, but context can be inferred from GPS, GIS and activity classification data.
• Dr Sofie Compernolle presented a just-in-time adaptive intervention in 105 older adults, where a good moment to prompt someone needed both vulnerability to prolonged sitting and receptivity to interrupting it.
• Dr Louisa Herring’s evaluation of Steps4Health, an mHealth tool in an NHS weight-management service, found a rise of almost 1,000 daily steps in six weeks, close to double the 500-step clinically important difference. 

Prof Bauman expects the largest gain elsewhere. Step-based targets are not new, Japan had them in the 1960s, so devices are unlikely to rewrite the WHO guidelines. What they will reshape is the prevalence estimates, by holding measurement quality in samples of millions rather than thousands. Context is harder. Prof Schipperijn put today’s sensors at six or seven correct classifications out of ten, improving as AI models learn from user corrections. The data to read context is already being collected, the field has yet to use it. 

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Working with industry rather than against it

Prof Schipperijn had argued against relying on commercial devices until he realised how many people work on a step algorithm inside a company like Google Fitbit, against far fewer academics with considerably less resources. A/Prof Aguiar noted the same shift from the consumer side. People already have dashboards and AI coaches interpreting their own data, so decisions researchers once controlled have gone, and the controlled trial may go with them. 

Opacity is the sticking point. Manufacturers do not publish how they develop, refine, or update their algorithms, and Prof Bauman noted that each runs its own and may never share it. Dr Mielke’s concern follows: the field has more metrics than it can interpret and rushes to simplify before the evidence is mature, as nutrition science did when one day eggs were good, and the next day they were not. If technology is to shift population physical activity, the field needs to work with industry on transparency rather than build parallel tools. 

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Who gets left out

Dr Mair raised equity as a gap in the special issue. Dr Tawonga Mwase-Vuma, who had connectivity trouble joining from a low-income Sub-Saharan African setting, highlighted that research-grade devices are too expensive for national surveillance and consumer wearables sit out of reach for most households. Movement behaviour research is also still developing there, so a capacity gap sits on top of the equipment gap. 

Dr Herring described barriers inside a UK health service. Clinicians will not use a tool they distrust or that disrupts their workflow, budgets are thin, and digital tools exclude patients with low digital literacy or with language preferences the tool does not support. 

Prof Ding brought it back to purpose. Wearables answer a specific need for some people and are largely owned by wealthier people in high-income countries. Improving the measures for their own sake, while those left out stay left out, is the risk. Asked what the field must get right next, Dr Mielke named translation into practice and policy, and Prof Schipperijn named infrastructure that lets people share their own device data easily and ethically. 

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Mensajes para llevar a casa

• Technology has advanced measurement and surveillance, and on its own it will not close the behaviour gap.
• Policy and built-environment work is slower, and it is where the gap sits. 
• Context is the next gain to be made. Sensors can infer where and why movement happens, though classification accuracy has some way to go. 
• Equity has to be designed in from the start. Cost, connectivity, digital literacy and research capacity still exclude the populations who stand to gain the most. 

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Acknowledgement

This webinar was co-hosted by ISPAH and the Journal of Physical Activity and Health.

Thanks to Prof Cathie Sherrington, Dr George Thomas and Dr Jacqueline Mair for moderating, to Dr Mair and A/Prof Elroy Aguiar for guest-editing the special issue, and to Prof Melody Ding, Prof Jasper Schipperijn, Dr Sofie Compernolle, Dr Louisa Herring, Prof Adrian Bauman, Dr Gregore Mielke and Dr Tawonga Mwase-Vuma for their contributions. 

Autores: Bushra Ali | London Sport Institute, Faculty of Science and Technology, Middlesex University, London, UK