PhD student, Io Hui, has published a systematic review of controlled studies exploring the use of mobile applications to support self-management for people with asthma.
Published in the journal JAMIA, Io says of the review:
“This paper not only systematically reviews on the clinical outcomes of the telehealthcare interventions for asthma, but also gives a novel insight into the mobile application features utilised and associated with clinical effectiveness and adherence.
Globally, the smartphone subscription is over 7000 million in the last year, 8900 million is predicted by 2022¹. Mobile applications are widely used and adopted by patients for health management²,³. However, many people stop using healthcare apps shortly after downloading⁴ which limits their potential for supporting on-going self-management. Our meta-analysis and narrative synthesis of the clinical outcomes from twelve randomised control studies reach inconsistent conclusions, though we found no evidence of harm. We identified ten application features and assessed their association with clinical outcomes and measures of adherence.
We believe our findings have important implications for policy makers, technology developers and researchers both encouraging on-going work in this area and highlighting the limited evidence on the features that improve adoption of and adherence to applications."
¹Ericsson mobility report. June 2016. Available from https://www.ericsson.com/mobility-report http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/node/4548 (Accessed June 2017)
²Candace I, Sophie CC, Robert W et al. Delivering the benefits of digital health care. Available from http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/node/4548 (Accessed June 2017)
³Deloitte report: How digital technology is transforming health and social care. Available from http://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/life-sciences-and-healthcare/articles/connected-health.html (Accessed June 2017) 4 Paul K, Dustin TD. Health app use among US mobile phone owners: a national survey. JMIR mHealth 2015;3(4):e101.
⁴Paul K, Dustin TD. Health app use among US mobile phone owners: a national survey. JMIR mHealth 2015;3(4):e101.
Full text
Read the full paper in the open access journal, JAMIA
Cite this paper as
Chi Yan Hui, Robert Walton, Brian McKinstry, Tracy Jackson, Richard Parker, Hilary Pinnock
The use of mobile applications to support self-management for people with asthma: a systematic review of controlled studies to identify features associated with clinical effectiveness and adherence
J Am Med Inform Assoc (2017) 24 (3): 619-632. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocw143