Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 20, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 20, 2018 - Jan 1, 2019
Date Accepted: Feb 25, 2019
Date Submitted to PubMed: Mar 16, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Patients’ identified needs and requirements for e-health pain management interventions
ABSTRACT
Background:
A growing body of evidence supports the potential effectiveness of e-health interventions in managing chronic pain. However, research on patients with chronic pain’s needs and preferences in relation to e-health interventions is scarce. Eliciting user input in the development of e-health interventions may be a crucial step towards developing meaningful interventions for patients, potentially improving treatment outcomes.
Objective:
To 1) explore patients with chronic pain’s experiences with information and communication technology (ICT), 2) explore how an e-health intervention can support the everyday needs and challenges of patients with chronic pain, and 3) detect possible facilitators and barriers for patients’ use of an e-health pain management intervention.
Methods:
Twenty patients living with chronic pain and 5 spouses participated in individual interviews. A semi-structured interview guide was used to explore participants’ needs, experiences and challenges in daily life, as well as their ICT experiences and preferences for e-health support interventions. Spouses were recruited and interviewed to gain additional insight into the patients’ needs. The study utilized qualitative thematic analysis.
Results:
The participants were generally experienced technology users, reporting using apps regularly. They were mainly in favor of using an e-health self-management intervention for chronic pain, considering it a potentially acceptable way of gathering knowledge and support around pain management. The participants expressed needs for more information and knowledge, support for establishing better balance in everyday life and also support for improving communication and social participation. They provided suggestions for the e-health intervention content and functionality to address these needs. Accessibility, personalization and usability were emphasized as important elements for an e-health support tool. The participants described an ideal e-health intervention as one that could be used for support and distraction from pain, at any time or in any situation, regardless of varying pain intensity and concentration capacity.
Conclusions:
This study provides insight into user preferences for e-health interventions aiming to address self-management for chronic pain. Participants highlighted important factors to be considered when designing and developing e-health interventions for self-management of chronic pain, illustrating the importance and benefit of including users in the development of e-health interventions. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03705104
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© 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.