JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Mobile health (mHealth) is publicized as a potential solution for the rising demand of healthcare’s limited resources and poor health outcomes. This is especially true for chronic illnesses such as diabetes, as mHealth increases the options for individuals to self-manage their health. These options can improve patients’ health knowledge, engagement and capacity to contribute to their own care decisions. However, there are few solutions for sharing and presenting patients’ mHealth data with healthcare providers (HCPs) in a mutually understandable way. This limits the potential of shared decision making. Therefore, data-sharing solutions should enable both parties to collaborate in their use of patient-gathered data (PGD) through shared decision making for health self-management.

Objective:

Through a 6-month mixed-method feasibility study, held in Norway, we explore the impacts that a system for sharing PGD from mHealth devices has on patients and HCPs during diabetes consultations.

Methods:

Patients with all kinds of diabetes, including Type 1 (T1D) and Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), will be recruited through their HCPs. Participants will use the Diabetes Diary mobile phone app to register and review diabetes self-management data, and be encouraged to share this data during diabetes consultations. The primary outcome is feasibility of the system: HCP impressions and expectations (pre-study survey), usability (System Usability Scale), functionalities used and data shared during consultations, and study-end focus group meetings. Secondary outcomes include change in the therapeutic relationship (Health Care Climate Questionnaire), patient empowerment (Diabetes Empowerment Scale) and wellness (WHO-5 Wellness), health parameters (HbA1c and blood pressure (BP)), and patients’ own app-registered health measures (blood glucose (BG), medication, physical activity, diet and weight).

Results:

To date, we have recruited n=8 patients and n=15 HCPs. We will compare measures taken at baseline and 6-months, as well as data continuously gathered from the app. Analysis will aim to explain which measures have changed, how they have changed and why they have changed during the intervention. We expect to better understand the necessities and potential benefits that sharing PGD during consultations will have on patients and HCPs, both individually and together.

Conclusions:

By comprehensively measuring the impacts of a tailored-made system, we will be able to present the possibilities and challenges related to a system for sharing mHealth data, for future interventions and practice. Results will also demonstrate what more needs to be done to make this collaboration between HCPs and patients successful and subsequently improve patients’ health and engagement in their care.