Background As the use of smartphones and mobile apps is increasing, mobile health (mHealth) can be used as a cost-effective option to provide behavioral interventions aimed at educating and promoting self-management for chronic diseases such as diabetes. Although many mobile software apps have been developed for this purpose, they usually lack a theoretical foundation and do not follow the guidelines suggested for evidence-based practice. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a theory-based self-management app for people with type 2 diabetes and provide an app based on a needs assessment analysis. Objective This paper describes the development and usability evaluation of a cloud-based and mobile-based diabetes self-management app designed to help people with diabetes change their health behavior and also enable remote monitoring by health care providers. Methods The development of this mHealth solution comprises 3 phases. Phase I: feature extraction of the Android apps that had a user rating of 4 stars or more and review of papers related to mHealth for diabetes self-management were performed followed by seeking expert opinions about the extracted features to determine the essential features of the app. Phase II: design and implementation included selecting which behavioral change and structural theories were to be applied the app and design of the website. Phase III: evaluation of the usability and user experience of the mobile app by people with diabetes and the portal by health care providers using the User Experience Questionnaire. Results The developed mobile app includes modules that support several features. A person’s data were entered or collected and viewed in the form of graphs and tables. The theoretical foundation of behavioral intervention is the transtheoretical model. Users were able to receive customized messages based on the behavioral change preparation stage using the Kreuter algorithm. The clinician’s portal was used by health care providers to monitor the patients. The results of the usability evaluation revealed overall user satisfaction with the app. Conclusions Mobile- and cloud-based systems may be an effective tool for facilitating the modification of self-management of chronic care. The results of this study showed that the usability of mobile- and cloud-based systems can be satisfactory and promising. Given that the study used a behavioral model, assessment of the effectiveness of behavior change over time requires further research with long-term follow-up.

Purpose Interest in mobile health applications (apps) for diabetes self-care is growing. Mobile health is a promising new treatment modality for diabetes, though few smartphone apps have been designed based on a proper study and prioritization. The aim of this study was to determine a minimum set of features for diabetes mobile apps. Methods This study was conducted in three steps: 1.A review of the literature to collect all available features, 2. Assessing the validity of suggested features by Content Validity Index (CVI) and Content Validity Ratio (CVR), 3. Examining the importance of features by Friedman test.Results We retrieved all features of available mobile apps for type 2 diabetes, which are suggested and discussed in literature and compiled as a single list comprising of 33 features. Then, a survey of expert's opinion produced a set of 23 final minimum features which includes all types of tracking, mealtime tagging, food database, diet management, educational materials, healthy coping, reducing risks, problem solving, Email, color coding, alerts, reminder, target range setting, trend chart view, logbook view, numerical indicators view, customizable theme, preset notes, and custom notes. According to the mean rank which indicates the priority of each feature, the most important one was blood glucose tracking (with 16.71 mean rank) and the least important feature was the numerical indicators like such as standard deviation or average (with 6.50 mean rank). Conclusions The present study is the first step towards the development of our mobile apps for people with type II diabetes, and highest the essential features that are required for an optimal self-care comprehensively.

BackgroundDespite the growing use of mobile applications (apps) for chronic disease management, the evidence on the effectiveness of this technology on clinical and behavioural outcomes of the patients is scant. Many studies highlight the importance of the theoretical foundations of mobile-based interventions. One of the most widely accepted models for the management of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, is the Chronic Care Model (CCM). In this study, we investigated the conformity of the selected diabetes mobile apps with CCM.MethodWe searched online journal databases related to diabetes mobile apps to find common features. Then considering the components of the CCM as a reference model, features of some popular and top-ranking apps were compared with CCM.ResultsAmong 23 studied apps, 34 per cent of them had medium conformity and 66 per cent of these apps were in weak conformity. The self-management support component is covered by 100 per cent of them. Ninety-five per cent of apps have covered the proactive follow-up component.ConclusionsApp conformance with CCM is generally weak. App developers are recommended to give greater consideration to established theoretical models in their design and implementation.

BACKGROUND As the use of smartphones and mobile apps is increasing, mobile health (mHealth) can be used as a cost-effective option to provide behavioral interventions aimed at educating and promoting self-management for chronic diseases such as diabetes. Although the goal of many existing programs is the same, they usually do not follow the guidelines suggested for evidence-based practices and lack a theoretical foundation. Therefore, this study seizes this increasing demand to develop a self-management program for people with type 2 diabetes and provide a program in Farsi according to the extracted requirements. OBJECTIVE This paper describes the development and preliminary evaluation of a mobile-based diabetes self-management system, which was designed to help people with behavior change and also enable their remote monitoring by healthcare providers. METHODS The development of the system involved: (1) exploring the best mobile apps and papers related to mHealth diabetes self-management (2) conducting an overview with experts and determine the essential capabilities of system (3) selecting which behavioral change and structural theories to be used in the system and (4) developing the mobile app and website (6) evaluating the system with people with diabetes and healthcare providers. RESULTS The developed mobile app includes modules which support several features. Person’s data can be entered or collected, and overviewed in the form of graphs and tables. The foundation of behavioral intervention is Transtheoretical model. Persons were able to receive customized messages based on behavioral change preparation stage using the Kreuter’s tailoring messages algorithm. The developed web site dedicated to healthcare providers which include same capabilities. The results of the preliminary evaluations revealed overall user satisfaction with the system. CONCLUSIONS Information and communication technologies, especially mobile and wearable technologies which use a behavioral theories, can be utilized as a useful tool for facilitating the modification of self-management behaviors and facilitation remote monitoring. However, further research is needed to report the effectiveness of the system in practice.