Prof. Dr. Rohana Abd Ghani

Prof. Dr. Rohana Abdul Ghani is a Professor of Medicine and Senior Consultant Endocrinologist at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). She serves as the President of the Malaysian Society of Obesity (MYOS) and leads key clinical programs for metabolic and endocrine disorders at Hospital Al-Sultan Abdullah.

Digital Frontier in Obesity Management: Leveraging Digital Transformation for Better Outcomes

The global obesity epidemic presents an unprecedented public health and economic challenge. Traditional lifestyle interventions often suffer from poor long-term adherence and limited scalability. To address this, the digital frontier in obesity care leverages telehealth, mobile health (mHealth) applications, wearable devices, and artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize clinical outcomes and expand universal access. Personalised digital therapeutics dynamically tailor interventions to individual biological and behavioural needs. Remote monitoring, smart scales, and AI-powered conversational chatbots provide continuous, real-time behavioural coaching. Stand-alone, fully autonomous digital programs utilizing video feedback, emotional eating coping strategies, and friendly social competition can achieve significant weight losses of up to 8.4% at 12 months. Furthermore, pairing these digital behavioural strategies with emerging obesity management medications (OMMs) maximizes metabolic outcomes, supports medication adherence, and preserves muscle mass. AI has a significant potential to transform predictive analytics and diagnostics. Supervised learning models utilizing electronic health records achieve over 85% accuracy in identifying early childhood obesity risks. Additionally, computer vision and deep learning has been able to automate body composition analyses through CT, MRI, or 3D scans, enabling precise visceral fat quantifications and cardiometabolic risk stratifications beyond simple BMI metrics. Despite these advantages, several key barriers impede widespread clinical integration. Challenges include high user attrition after three to six months, data privacy and security vulnerabilities, demographic and algorithmic bias, and a lack of long-term prospective clinical validation. Robust multidisciplinary collaboration and ethical frameworks are critical to successfully integrating these digital innovations into routine care and achieving equitable health outcomes globally.