P1864renal Health Mobile Application: An Analysis of Its Use in Brazil

Abstract

Background and Aims Chronic kidney disease (CKD) have been considered, worldwide, an important public health problem due to its increasing prevalence and its potential consequence in reducing the time and quality of life of affected patients. In addition, the number of individuals with CKD will continue to increase if no strategies are adopted for preventing and delaying the progression of CKD. Thus, corroborating this strategic thinking and the spread of the internet around the world, we developed the Renal Health mobile app (Oliveira et al. Kidney Int Rep. 2019 Jan 28;4(4):609-613). Because it is easily accessible, free of charge and has essential tools for the promotion of renal health, such as diet therapy guidelines, it has conquered users throughout Brazil, connecting patients and health professionals. From this perspective, the objective of this study was to statistically analyze Renal Health application downloads in 16 Brazilian states, where the app was found to be in use. Method Using the Power BI tools and Dashboards it was possible to extract statistical data from the Renal Health application, since its last updated version, last year, to January 2020. Power BI software is a set of analysis and data sharing tools where the main purpose is to generate reports along with Dashboards which is a kind of graphical interface that provides visualizations of key metrics and performance indicators of a mobile application. This way, from this toolkit, it was possible to obtain a real-time and transparent progress report on the number of Renal Health application downloads, with no personal identification of users. Results The 16 Brazilian states under analysis make up a total of 526 Renal Health application downloads by January 2020. Among these states, São Paulo obtained a total of 129 downloads (24.53%), being the place with the largest number of Renal Health users. The second largest state in number of downloads was Ceara, with a total of 111 (21.10%). The states of Rio de Janeiro, Acre and Minas Gerais also obtained a significant number of downloads of the Renal Health application, totaling 53 (10.08%), 48 (9.13%) and 45 (8.56%), respectively (Figure 1). Comparing the results of this study with the last Brazilian Dialysis Survey, which is coordinated by the Brazilian Society of Nephrology, we can observe the coherence of these results, since the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro were cited by this survey as the states with the largest prevalence rates of patients undergoing dialysis, evidencing a possible correlation between the use of this type of technological tool (Renal Health) and the highest prevalence of dialytic CKD, once the Renal Health application is a good way to improve patients’ adherence to treatment and help them cope with the disease. Conclusion The Renal Health application is becoming better known by CKD patients in Brazil, and, based on the number of users currently presented in this study, we conclude that there is a growing search for CKD patients for knowledge about kidney disease on mobile platforms. Therefore, there is a challenge to improve new tools with increasingly interactive content and accessible language, as our team intend to do in the next versions of this app.