Assessment of Self-Care Activities Among Diabetes Mellitus Type 1 And 2 Patients Towards Developing A Community Mobile Health Application, A Prototype

Abstract

Developing a comprehensive mobile application for self-care of diabetes mellitus involves the evaluation and usability of a certain app. It includes the assessment of participants’ behaviors and self-care habits in terms of diet, exercise, monitoring glucose levels, medication adherence and education or knowledge on their disease. However, challenges to lifestyle modification due to low health literacy and difficulty of establishing self-care habits are apparent among diabetes patients. Most literatures on mobile health applications revealed significant benefits in terms of managing the effects of chronic diseases among users particularly on self-care habits. Reviews indicate that incorporating a certain mobile health app in diabetes patients will provide aid in disease self-care. This study explored on how consumers use the developed app for health monitoring, self-care habits as well as their perceived benefits from utilizing the app, and suggestions for improvement on the health application. The aim of this study is to develop a mobile application for self-care of diabetes mellitus. This descriptive quantitative study was conducted in Ambuklao, Bokod, Benguet. There are 45 respondents who gave their consent and participated in the study. Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities (SDSCA) Questionnaire and mHealth App Usability Questionnaire (MAUQ) were the tools used to gather the necessary data to address the research problems. The collected data from the respondents had been tallied, classified, tabulated and subjected to weighted mean and ranking. The results revealed that among the five self-care behaviors of residents in Ambuklao with diabetes, diet garnered a weighted mean of 2.76, exercise with 2.83, glucose monitoring with 2.65, foot care with 2.80 and medication adherence with 2.78. The findings were interpreted with the highest weighted mean as the most practiced self-care behavior which is exercise whereas the least practiced is glucose monitoring. Furthermore, evaluation on the usability of the developed application has yielded a weighted mean of 3.49 interpreted as somewhat agree. The developed application has at some extent catered to the monitoring of blood glucose. Glucose monitoring among the diabetic individuals in Ambuklao was reflected in the study as the least practiced self-care. This study then provided aid through the development of an application catered to monitor glycemic levels of people with diabetes mellitus. Further evaluation revealed that the developed app somewhat met the expectations of the study population. This study implies for further exploration of the factors influencing non-adherence to self-care behaviors as well as input innovations on developing localized applications for glucose monitoring.