JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Management of chronic recurrent medical conditions (CRMC), such as migraine headaches, chronic pain and anxiety/depression, is a major challenge for modern providers. Often the most effective treatments and/or preventative measures for CRMCs vary from patient to patient; a situation that lends itself to use of mobile health (mHealth) technology for self-management.

Objective:

To examine user satisfaction, adoption rate, and applications of a prototype mHealth application for self-management of CRMCs

Methods:

In this pilot study with internet-based recruitment, we assessed user satisfaction, rate of adoption, and barriers to use of the iMTracker, an edge-based, iOS (iPhone) application that applies the N-of-1 clinical trial format to self-management of CRMCs.

Results:

From May 15, 2019 until December 23, 2020, we recruited 180 primarily Caucasian subjects to pilot test the iMTracker for user-selected CRMCs, among which we found that 73 (69.5%) of the 105 subjects who were not lost to follow-up reported full 3-month use. The most common CRMC was pain (other than headaches) in 37.7% of subjects, followed by headaches in 17.0% and mental health—anxiety and depression--in 12.8%. 36.1% of subjects experienced the condition multiple times in a day, 41.7% experienced the condition daily, and 16.1% experienced the condition weekly, resulting in a total of 93.9% of subjects experiencing the condition at least weekly. We found that the main barriers to use were the design and technical function of the application, but that use of the application resulted in an improvement in confidence in the efficiency and safety/privacy of this approach.

Conclusions:

The iMTracker provides a feasible platform for the N-of-1 trial approach to self-management of CRMCs. Future work is needed to examine the use of this application in older, underrepresented minorities, and lower socioeconomic status populations.