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

Abstract

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.