Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Mar 8, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 12, 2019 - Apr 3, 2019
Date Accepted: May 29, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Perceptions of healthcare providers regarding a mHealth intervention to manage COPD: a Qualitative Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Using a Mobile Health (mHealth) intervention, consisting of a smartphone and compatible medical device, has the potential to enhance Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) treatment outcomes while mitigating health care costs. The purpose of this study is to understand the perceptions of health care providers (HCPs) regarding the use of mHealth in COPD management.
Objective:
To explore the potential facilitators and barriers among HCPs regarding the use of mHealth interventions for COPD management.
Methods:
This is a qualitative study. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 30 HCPs, including nurses, pharmacists, and physicians who work directly with COPD patients. A flexible prompts guide was used to facilitate discussions. Topics included: demographics, mHealth usage, perceptions towards challenges of mHealth adoption, factors facilitating mHealth adoption, and preferences regarding features of the mHealth intervention for COPD management. Interviews were conversational in nature and items were not asked verbatim or in the order presented. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and compared against the digital recordings to ensure the accuracy of the content. After creating a codebook for analysis, two researchers independently coded the remaining interview data using pattern coding. They discussed commonalities and differences in coding until consensus was reached.
Results:
A total of 30 nurses, physicians, and pharmacists participated. The main facilitators to mHealth adoption are possible health benefits for patients, ease of use, educating patients and their HCPs, credibility, and reducing the cost to the healthcare system. Alternatively, the barriers adoption are technical issues, privacy and confidentiality issues, lack of awareness, potential limited uptake from the elderly, potential limited connection between patients and HCPs, and finances.
Conclusions:
It is important to understand the perceptions of HCPs regarding adoption of innovative mHealth interventions for COPD management. This study identifies some potential facilitators and barriers that may inform the successful development and implementation of mHealth interventions for COPD management.
Citation

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