Determining minimum set of features for diabetes mobile apps

Abstract

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.

A Comprehensive 6A Framework for Improving Patient Self-Management of Hypertension Using mHealth Services: Qualitative Thematic Analysis

“…Despite best efforts, limited medical resources and time make it difficult to educate patients and meet their individual needs in traditional face-to-face interventions [ 50 ]. The advantage of the mHealth service comes from its high scalability for providing services, for example, disseminating a large amount of educational material to a wide range of patients with hypertension for effective health education for chronic disease management [ 51 - 53 ]. It also allows these patients to absorb the information in their own time and at their own pace until they are fully aware of the importance and have the ability to perform self-management.…”

Mobile-Based and Cloud-Based System for Self-management of People With Type 2 Diabetes: Development and Usability Evaluation

“…The details of methods and results of the literature review as well as the process of selecting and verifying the features were published previously [ 22 ]. Based on expert opinions, 23 relevant features out of 33 were approved.…”

“…People with diabetes themselves also acknowledge the concerns of using these apps, which may be related to their experiences of using unreliable online tools. This is a reasonable concern because few apps are research-based and even may be developed without any guideline-based or expert-approved content [ 22 ]. The results of this study showed that users were generally satisfied with the app.…”

“…Initially, we conducted a survey to determine what features and functions are required for an ideal mobile app for people with T2DM [ 22 ]. We reviewed the literature and available diabetes apps for iOS and Android to investigate the features of diabetes apps to get familiar with them.…”

“…A total of 21 experts participated in the survey. The details of this phase have been reported elsewhere [ 22 ].…”