title: Patients' Perceptions and Experiences of a mHealth Diabetes Self-management System.
abstract: Chronic diseases, including diabetes, constitute a substantial disease burden around the world. Mobile self-management systems now play a significant and increasingly important role in patients' disease management. Yet, patients' perceptions of these systems after longer-term use are largely unexplored. A random sample of 10 diabetes patients was assessed immediately after they exited a larger, 6-month randomized controlled trial on the use of a mHealth system called Care4Life. This descriptive, exploratory study assessed patients' perceptions and experiences of mHealth using a questionnaire and semistructured interview whose development was guided by the Technology Acceptance Model. Results indicated that patients saw clear benefits in using the technology and had favorable behavioral disease outcomes after using Care4Life. Suggestions for improving the system were highly individual despite the apparent homogeneity of the patient group. The study begins to fill the gap about the longer-term use of mHealth systems in chronic disease management and reflects the significance of individual needs for mHealth systems.
authors.affiliation: Author Affiliations: Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City (Mr Georgsson and Dr Staggers); Faculty of Computing, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden (Mr Georgsson); Summit Health Informatics, Salt Lake City, Utah (Dr Staggers).
authors.forename: Mattias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Georgsson
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Staggers
mesh_terms: D001292:Attitude to Computers; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000628:therapy*; D019468:Disease Management; D006801:Humans; D048108:Nursing Informatics; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012648:Self Care / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D060145:Text Messaging