title: HealthTWITTER Initiative: Design of a Social Networking Service Based Tailored Application for Diabetes Self-Management.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Diabetes is a chronic disease of continuously increasing prevalence. It is a disease with risks of serious complications, thus warranting its long-term management. However, current health management and education programs for diabetes mainly consist of one-way communication, and systematic social support backup to solve diabetics' emotional problems is insufficient.
  
  
  METHODS
  According to individual behavioral changes based on the Transtheoretical Model, we designed a non-drug intervention, including exercise, and applied it to a mobile based application. For effective data sharing between patients and physicians, we adopted an SNS function for our application in order to offer a social support environment.
  
  
  RESULTS
  To induce continual and comprehensive care for diabetes, rigorous self-management is essential during the diabetic's life; this is possible through a collaborative patient-physician healthcare model. We designed and developed an SNS-based diabetes self-management mobile application that supports the use of social groups, which are present in three social GYM types. With simple testing of patients in their 20s and 30s, we were able to validate the usefulness of our application.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Mobile gadget-based chronic disease symptom management and intervention has the merit that health management can be conducted anywhere and anytime in order to cope with increases in the demand for health and medical services that are occurring due to the aging of the population and to cope with the surge of national medical service costs. This patient-driven and SNS-based intervention program is expected to contribute to promoting the health management habits of diabetics, who need to constantly receive health guidance.
authors.affiliation: Seoul National University Biomedical Informatics (SNUBI), Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Hye Hyeon
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Medical Informatics and Health Technology (MIT), Department of Health Care Management, College of Social Science, Gachon University, Seongnam, Korea.
authors.forename: Hwa Jeong
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Seo
keywords: Diabetes Mellitus; Intervention Studies; Mobile Health; Self Care; Social Support