JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Smartphone ownership is ubiquitous among US adults, making the delivery of health interventions via a mobile application (i.e., mHealth) attractive to many researchers and clinicians. Meditation interventions have become popular and have been delivered to study participants via mobile applications to improve a range of health outcomes in both healthy adults and those with chronic disease. However, these meditation mHealth interventions have been limited by a lack of high-quality control groups. More specifically, these studies have lacked consistency in their use of active, time-, and attention-matched control groups.

Objective:

The purpose of this study was to beta-test a novel health education podcast control condition delivered via a smartphone application that would be a strong comparator to be used in future studies of application-based meditation interventions.

Methods:

Myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) cancer patients were recruited nationally via internet-based strategies, including social media, social networking sites, and email listservs. Eligible participants were directed to complete an online informed consent before enrollment. Upon enrollment, participants were informed to download the investigator-developed health education podcast application onto their mobile phone and listen to ~60 min/week of cancer-related educational podcasts for 12 weeks. Time spent listening to the podcasts was collected by the app and downloaded by the research team. The benchmarks for feasibility included, >70% of participants completing, >70% of the prescribed 60 min/week of podcasts, >70% of participants reporting that they were satisfied with the intervention, and >70% of participants reporting that they enjoyed the health education podcasts.

Results:

A total of 96 MPN patients were enrolled in the study; however, 16 never began the intervention. Of the 80 patients who participated in the intervention, 39 completed the entire study (i.e., sustained participation through the follow-up period). There were 25 participants lost to follow-up (i.e., never responded to contact attempts after initial enrollment) and 16 that dropped out. Of the 39 participants that completed the intervention, participation averaged ~55 min/week. For 91.7% of weeks (n=11/12), at least 70% of participants completed at least 70% of their total prescribed usage. Almost half reported that they enjoyed the health education podcasts (48.7%) and that they were satisfied with the intervention (43.6%). There were no significant changes in cancer-related outcomes from baseline to post-intervention.

Conclusions:

A 12-week, health education podcast mobile application was demanded but not accepted in a sample of cancer patients. Using the mobile application was not associated with significant changes in cancer-related symptoms. Based on findings from this study, a health education podcast mobile application may be a feasible option as a time- and attention-matched control group for efficacy trials with more extensive formative research for the content of the podcasts and its acceptability by the specific population. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03907774.