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Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research

Date Submitted: Jul 13, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 18, 2018 - Sep 12, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 31, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Development of PositiveLinks: A Mobile Phone App to Promote Linkage and Retention in Care for People With HIV

Laurence C, Wispelwey E, Flickinger TE, Grabowski M, Waldman AL, Plews-Ogan E, Debolt C, Reynolds G, Cohn W, Ingersoll K, Dillingham R

Development of PositiveLinks: A Mobile Phone App to Promote Linkage and Retention in Care for People With HIV

JMIR Form Res 2019;3(1):e11578

DOI: 10.2196/11578

PMID: 30892269

PMCID: 6446157

Development of PositiveLinks: A Smart Phone Application to Promote Linkage to Care for People with HIV

  • Colleen Laurence; 
  • Erin Wispelwey; 
  • Tabor E. Flickinger; 
  • Marika Grabowski; 
  • Ava Lena Waldman; 
  • Erin Plews-Ogan; 
  • Claire Debolt; 
  • George Reynolds; 
  • Wendy Cohn; 
  • Karen Ingersoll; 
  • Rebecca Dillingham

ABSTRACT

Background:

Linkage to and retention in HIV care are challenging, especially in the Southeastern United States. The rise in smartphone application (app) use and the potential for an app to deliver ‘just in time’ messaging provides a new opportunity to improve linkage and retention among people living with HIV (PLWH).

Objective:

We aimed to develop an app to engage, link and retain people in care. We evaluated the acceptability, feasibility, and impact of the app among users.

Methods:

App development was informed by principles of chronic disease self-management and formative interviews with PLWH. Once developed, the app was distributed to participants, and usability feedback was incorporated in subsequent iterations. We interviewed app users after 3 weeks to identify usability issues, need for training on the phone or app, and to assess acceptability. We tracked and analyzed usage of app features for the cohort over 2 years.

Results:

Seventy-seven participants used the app during the pilot study. Query response rate for the first 2 years was 47.7%. Query response declined at a rate of 0.67% per month. The community message board was the most popular feature, and 77.9% of users posted on the board at least once during the 2 years.

Conclusions:

The PositiveLinks app was feasible and acceptable among non-urban PLWH. High participation on the community message board suggests that social support from peers is important for people recently diagnosed with or returning to care for HIV.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Laurence C, Wispelwey E, Flickinger TE, Grabowski M, Waldman AL, Plews-Ogan E, Debolt C, Reynolds G, Cohn W, Ingersoll K, Dillingham R

Development of PositiveLinks: A Mobile Phone App to Promote Linkage and Retention in Care for People With HIV

JMIR Form Res 2019;3(1):e11578

DOI: 10.2196/11578

PMID: 30892269

PMCID: 6446157

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.