The Effect of Non-Personalised Tips on the Continued Use of Self-Monitoring mHealth Applications

Brain Sciences

Winfried Schlee¹  Ruediger Pryss²  Robin Kraft³  Johannes Schobel³  Yash Shah⁴  Vishnu Unnikrishnan⁴  Myra Spiliopoulou⁴  Miro Schleicher⁴  Noor Jamaludeen⁴ 

[1] Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Regensburg University, 93053 Regensburg, Germany;Institute of Clinical Epidemiology and Biometry, University of Würzburg, 97070 Würzburg, Germany;Institute of Databases and Information Systems, Ulm University, 89081 Ulm, Germany;Institute of Technical and Business Information Systems, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany;

关键词: tinnitus;    ecological momentary assessments;    physician feedback;    mHealth;    self-monitoring;    non-personalised tips;   

DOI  :  10.3390/brainsci10120924

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Chronic tinnitus, the perception of a phantom sound in the absence of corresponding stimulus, is a condition known to affect patients’ quality of life. Recent advances in mHealth have enabled patients to maintain a `disease journal’ of ecologically-valid momentary assessments, improving patients’ own awareness of their disease while also providing clinicians valuable data for research. In this study, we investigate the effect of non-personalised tips on patients’ perception of tinnitus, and on their continued use of the application. The data collected from the study involved three groups of patients that used the app for 16 weeks. Groups A & Y were exposed to feedback from the start of the study, while group B only received tips for the second half of the study. Groups A and Y were run by different supervisors and also differed in the number of hospital visits during the study. Users of Group A and B underwent assessment at baseline, mid-study, post-study and follow-up, while users of group Y were only assessed at baseline and post-study. It is seen that the users in group B use the app for longer, and also more often during the day. The answers of the users to the Ecological Momentary Assessments are seen to form clusters where the degree to which the tinnitus distress depends on tinnitus loudness varies. Additionally, cluster-level models were able to predict new unseen data with better accuracy than a single global model. This strengthens the argument that the discovered clusters really do reflect underlying patterns in disease expression.

【 授权许可】

Unknown