Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jan 10, 2019
Date Accepted: Mar 30, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Usage patterns of GlucoNote, a self-management smartphone app, based on ResearchKit, for patients with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Preventing progression from prediabetes to diabetes—or slowing the progression of diabetes—is an urgent task worldwide. Previous studies have shown that mHealth may powerfully support self-management for patients with type 2 diabetes. Certainly, mHealth improves healthcare efficiency and gives patients convenient access to self-management of their own health. Many healthcare applications (apps) are available right now, and their use in clinical studies with large-scale real-life data is expected. But the usage patterns of those apps—especially in the absence of intervention by medical professionals—remain unknown.
Objective:
Accordingly, we developed GlucoNote, an app that uses Apple’s ResearchKit to support self-management for type 2 diabetes and prediabetes patients; the app does not require prescription or intervention by medical professionals. We evaluated its usage patterns in a study conducted remotely.
Methods:
Users of iPhones across Japan who have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes were free to download GlucoNote and to participate in the study after they provided consent electronically on the app. The 522 users who enrolled in the study within 1 year of its release were analyzed. We analyzed the retention rates of 357 participants who recorded at least one of four items—body weight, blood sugar, blood pressure or dietary information. Characteristics of participants who used GlucoNote longer than four weeks (“Robust users”) were compared with those of participants who did not (“non-Robust users”). The changes among Robust users were evaluated.
Results:
The median observation and retention durations were, respectively, 382 days (interquartile range [IQR] 275-423) and 8 days (IQR 1-63). The retention rates for 2 days and for 4, 8 and 12 weeks were, respectively, 62.7% (95% confidence interval [CI] 57.5-67.5), 35.3% (30.4-40.3), 27.2% (22.7-31.9) and 22.0% (17.9-26.5). Men were more likely to be Robust users than were women (P=.02). At week 0, Robust users were more likely than non-Robust users to have a higher daily energy intake (median 1595 kcal [IQR 1198-1788] vs 1451 kcal [769-1657], P=.04) and have higher daily step counts (median 6108 [IQR 3797-9227] vs 5171 [2885-7258], P=.001). Among Robust users, body weight decreased from weeks 0 to 4 (mean 71.3kg [SD 14.1] to 70.8 [SD 13.9], P=.002) by mean 0.6% (SD 1.6).
Conclusions:
GlucoNote offered a valuable opportunity to evaluate usage patterns of apps. Future challenges include improving low retention rates and evaluating their effects.
Citation
